


LEFT

by ShesSoTumblr



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Abandonment, Adorable Peter Parker, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Neglect, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Hogan is a Good Bro, IronDad and SpiderSon, Kid Peter Parker, Non-superhero AU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark Friendship, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Peter Parker is a Brat, Peter Parker is a Mess, Peter acts younger than he is, Peter is a Little Shit, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Slow Build, Tony Stark Has A Heart, but he doesnt want one, but never actually happened, peter is eleven years old, rad, suspected physical child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28326597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShesSoTumblr/pseuds/ShesSoTumblr
Summary: 11 year old Peter is left on the doorstep of his biological fathers door. Now he and Tony must come to terms with their new situation and learn to exist as father and son it doesn't help to consider all of the neglect and developmental trauma Peter has been through.
Relationships: Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 56
Kudos: 319





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first fanfic so I'm open to any tips anyone has to help me become a better writer, please be patient with me though. Hope you guys have a happy holidays (who celebrate the holidays) and enjoy this fic!

LEFT

Mary and Richard Parker were what you would call an odd couple. They met in college and immediately hit it off, soon getting together and staying together throughout college. Getting married after college while still continuing their goals of getting their dream jobs and living what they called the perfect life. Here’s where the odd part comes in Mary and Richard had an open relationship, they did since the beginning well since Mary caught Richard cheating with on her with her best friend. Since then they screwed whoever they wanted whenever they wanted and nothing bad came out of it… Until Mary Parker met Tony Stark at a conference in 2009 and hooked up with him. 

December 25 

Peter Parker is an 11 year old boy, well he’s turning 11 today. That’s not a big deal to him though considering no one ever celebrated with him or cared enough to even tell him Happy Birthday, oh yeah and today is also Christmas. A day that was loved by many and showed everyone the magic of the holidays was a celebration that Peter also hated because no one cared enough to celebrate with him. For as long as Peter could remember no one ever cared and they probably never will but that’s fine because Peter doesn’t need anyone in this world who doesn’t need him. He learned early on that he couldn’t wait for other people’s love and approval and instead took his life into his own hands, he did what he wanted when he wanted. 

When the 11 year old boy walked back into his small Queens apartment he was surprised to find his parents were home. 1 because they usually had a strict schedule of when they visited the small 2 bedroom apartment and 2 because when he walked in there was packing crates around filled with his things. That was odd, were they moving? 

A few minutes later Richard Parker walked into the room rolling a suitcase with him. Peter had already got comfortable and turned the tv on in the living room while he waited until someone told him what was happening. Richard let out an annoyed sigh at the sight of the little boy, he couldn’t express how happy he was that he and Mary we’re finally getting rid of him.

Peter looked up from his favorite show ‘The Amazing World of Gumball’ and asked Richard “ Are we moving?” It wasn’t the first time they had moved to a different apartment in the city so he wouldn’t be surprised if they did but it was so abrupt.  
Richard continued toward the door without giving the boy so much as a glance and told Peter “Wait for your mother, she’ll explain everything” and continued his way out the door with Peters suitcase.

Peter sat confused for a second before deciding to take Richards advice and turned back toward his show. A few minutes later Richard came back in and continued grabbing crates filled with Peters things while ignoring him. After a while all the crates and suitcases were gone and Richard went to the back to inform Peters mom. 

Both Parker’s came out a few minutes later and Mary stopped next to the couch to tell Peter to get up and head to the car. Peter stood up confused but did as he was told.  
Once outside he noticed that there was not only Mary’s car but Richards as well that the man was in. He headed toward Mary’s car before getting in the backseat. The entire ride was filled with silence until about an hour later they pulled up at a very secluded house that even had a gate to get into. Peter didn’t even know houses existed in New York since his parents always chose small apartments in suspect areas to rent out. 

They pulled up close to the passcode box to get past the gate and Mary jumped out of the car and made her way towards the trunk. Richard was behind them. Mary grabbed the tools she needed before popping open the back of the security box and burning a few wires causing the gate to open. She got back in the car and drove into the very woodsy cabin style area. 

As they pulled into the secluded house Peter started noticing details about the house, first off it was pretty dark besides the porch light on and a dim light on in the house which was a clear sign that no one was home. So what were they doing here? Second he noticed the house had a lot of land including a huge lake but the house itself didn’t look all that big. 

The car finally came to a stop and Peter could here the sound of Richards truck behind them. Once Mary turned the car off and got out he decided to get out too. Mary opened the opposite back door and grabbed one of Peters backpacks that she had filled with his school supplies before handing it to him. Peter moved to put the backpack on his back as Mary reached into the trunk and grabbed the boys two suitcases and handed him one. Peter grabbed the suitcase and followed Mary to the houses front porch. 

“Sit down” Mary said gesturing toward the wooden steps. Peter looked at her like he wanted to ask what was going on but knew his questions wouldn’t be answered. 

After telling the boy to sit down Mary turned and made her way to her husband to help him get the rest of the boys things. Together they went back and forth from truck to porch sitting the boys whole life on the porch. After about 45 minutes they had successfully gotten rid of any trace that the boy ever lived with them and splayed it across the front porch of the unknown house. 

Richard got back in his truck as Mary made her way back over to Peter holding an envelope and a small safety pin in her hand. She crouched in front of the boy as she opened the safety pin and put it through the top of the Manila envelope and safety pinned it to the thin red sweater the boy wore. 

“What are you doing?” Peter asked looking up at his mother  
“Richard and I are going out of state” Mary said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. All it did was leave the boy even more confused because if they were going away on business then why did they drive him so far away from home? Why did they come home to pack his stuff up and bring him here instead of leaving him home like they always did? Where was here? 

“Ok? Then take me home” Peter said as he looked up at Mary somehow knowing that it wasn’t going to happen. 

“That’s not your home anymore Peter, Richard and I are done we have given up too many opportunities because we had to take care of you and honestly were tired so we’re not doing it anymore” Mary said

The 11 year old wished that was the most hurtful thing his mother had ever said to him but it truly wasn’t and he couldn’t even bring himself to cry over cause he didn’t care about her either. 

“That still doesn’t explain where we are or why you’re leaving me here” Peter said waiting for a better explanation. 

“You know how I’ve always told about your real dad, well you’re going to live with him now” Mary said

All of Peters life Mary and Richard had always told him that his real dad didn’t want him and that he was just a waste of time and energy that he didn’t want to take care of. So you can imagine how confuse the boy must have felt to hear that his mother was leaving him to the man who didn’t want him. 

Before Peter could ask anymore questions Mary told him to make sure to give his dad the letter pinned to his shirt when he got home and made her way back to her car and pulling out of the secluded driveway leaving the little boy alone in 30 degree weather in almost pitch black darkness save from the porch light. 

The boy immediately wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them up to his chest as he curled up on the wooded steps. 

He softly started singing to himself “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Peter, Happy birthday to me.

After his little performance he let out a sigh and waited for anyone to come and see him sitting there. 

1 and a half hours later

Tony had finally been able to sneak away from the gala Pepper had so conveniently scheduled on Christmas Day, not that the man had any plans for Christmas. If you asked Tony Stark what he was doing for Christmas 10 years ago he’d probably reply back that he was getting blackout drunk. Tony was never a big fan of Christmas considering nearly 30 years ago his parents were tragically killed in a car accident the day before Christmas when he was 21 years old. 

He mostly sat quietly in the back of the SUV occasionally conversing with his long time friend/bodyguard/driver Happy Hogan. He enjoyed the silence for awhile before moving around to get ready to get out of the car and head into his cozy cabin home. 

Happy was confused and a little scared when he saw the open gate as he pulled into the driveway towards Tony’s secluded home. 

“Uh boss, by any chance did you forget to close your gate before you left?” 

Tony looked up from his phone confused as he too saw the open gate

“No, it’s an automatic gate and FRIDAY is in charge of opening and closing it” Tony said as he and Happy looked at each other expecting the worst

It wouldn’t be the first time someone broke into one of Tony’s homes but when he moved into this house he was very serious about making sure paparazzi or anyone couldn’t find this home considering it was deep into the nature part of New York and very secluded. 

Happy immediately moved to grab his phone to alert police and the rest of Tony’s security team that someone had broken in but before Happy could call anyone Tony told him that since they were already there they should just check it out themselves since FRIDAY would immediately alert them if someone broken into his home.

Happy was a little on edge about the idea but had no other choice but to listen to Tony because even though he was one of Tony’s oldest friends Tony was still his boss. He thought it was a terrible idea though and was gonna tell Tony once all this was over. 

Happy slowly drove through the open gate and down the driveway, his headlights were on bright so he could see if anything popped out. At first glance he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when he looked toward the lake, the yard, and the driveway. But then he looked up at the porch and saw a person. His heart started to race when he saw the person on Tony’s porch considering no one was supposed to be able to get through the gate unnoticed. But then he noticed that the person looked pretty small even though they were curled up on the porch. 

They looked like a small kid, but that just left the man even more confused cause where did the kid come from? And who was he? Tons of questions ran through Happy’s head as Tony tried to get his attention  
“What do you see?” “Happy?” “Happy!!” Tony kept firing questions only to be ignored.

Happy brought the car to a stop before turning toward Tony “it’s a kid” he said as he looked at Tony with a confused look 

Now Tony was confused because a kid? Where did the kid come from? What the hell type of parents let there kid sit outside in 30 degree weather with no supervision? 

Tony and Happy both looked at each other confused before deciding that neither of them had answers to each other questions and decided to as the actual kid why he was there. 

They both hopped out the car and cautiously made there way to the porch where the boy sat. 

The boy had clearly notice them coming because he looked up at them as they walked closer. 

Even though they were coming toward the boy he didn’t say anything so Tony decided to be the one to start the conversation. 

“Uh kid, where are your parents?” Tony asked 

The boy shrugged before opening his mouth. “ I don’t know they just left me here” 

That’s when both men noticed the crates and suitcases that sat on top of the porch a few feet away from the boy. 

Tony honestly didn’t know what to say and Happy looked like he was about to turn back around to get his phone out of the car. 

He looked down at the boys thin outfit a thin red sweater and a pair of black track pants. Did someone honestly leave this kid out here to freeze to death? He looked at the sweater and saw the yellow envelope pinned pinned? To the boys shirt. 

Ok what the hell? Tony thought to himself 

Peter noticed Tony looking at the Envelope on his shirt before reaching down to rip it off of him and extended it towards Tony. 

“I guess this is for you” He said to waiting for Tony to grab it

Tony was about to tell the boy that he didn’t think it was and that’s when he noticed in a quick scribble the name on the envelope. 

Tony Stark 

He grabbed the Envelope out of the boys hand not knowing what he was going to find inside of it, once opening it he saw that it contained a handwritten letter addressed to him and began reading it. The longer he read the letter the more pale and sick to his stomach he felt. 

Holy Fuck

He, Tony Stark had a kid


	2. His Spitting Image

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony gets to know his kid a little bit

Tony opened the yellow envelope and saw a pack of folded papers inside. He pulled the small stack of papers out and on the top was a handwritten note addressed to him.

_Tony,_  
_By now you’ve found a boy sitting in front of your house with crates filled with all his things. His name is Peter and he is eleven years old, if you do the math and add into the fact that he was born about 7 weeks premature you will realize that he is your son. I know you’re probably wondering why I never came to you when I was pregnant but honestly it never crossed my mind. My husband Richard and I figured we could handle it ourselves and decided to keep and raise Peter on our own terms. We quickly realized we weren’t cut out for the job and hired multiple babysitters and nannies to take care of him. He required to much time and attention and me and Richard were too work oriented to give him that. That worked for awhile until babysitters kept quitting because he was too much of a handful and would find ways to manipulate and lie to them. So we set up an apartment for him to stay while we worked and traveled and made sure to leave the necessities he would need to be taken care of. Well now were done, Richard and I received an amazing grant to help with our research in biochemistry but its out of the country and we cant keep going back and forth to make sure Peter hasn’t accidentally killed himself or burn the apartment down especially since we plan on staying there. It took research and a lot of sources but I was able to figure out where you stayed and Richard and I saw that it was best to give him to you. In the crates you will find everything about Peter including baby books, pictures, hospital and medical records, and also all of the things he’s allergic to. I know you probably see us as cruel and selfish for what we’re doing but under no circumstances are we forcing you to keep him we just thought you had the right to know, you are welcome to put him into the foster system._  
_Sincerely,_  
_Mary_

Tony had so many emotions running through him after reading the letter, first he felt sick knowing that Mary and her husband thought it was ok to abandon a little boy outside of a strangers home with all of his things and a note pinned to him like he was some stray animal. Actually scratch that cause no one should even treat an animal like that let alone an eleven year old boy, and to do that on Christmas no less sounded like they were trying to be nominated for the world’s most shittiest parent award. But on top of all that the one thing that kept running circles in his head was holy shit he had a kid.  
Tony was cut from his thoughts from said kid as Peter said in his soft voice taking a second to look up at Tony before looking away “I’m cold” as he curled up impossibly tighter on the step.

Tony pulled from his thoughts felt like an idiot because it was about freezing outside and who knew how long the kid had been out there in 30 degree weather without so much as an appropriate sweater on let alone a jacket.  
Tony immediately made his way up the four stairs toward the house and touched the knob immediately alerting his AI to open the door due to fingerprint technology.  
“Oh uh, yeah kid get inside” Tony stuttered before telling FRIDAY to turn the heat up as the lights in the house came on.  
“Right away boss” FRIDAY responded throughout the house  
Peter let Tony guide him into the house and jumped a little at the new voice before turning toward Tony confused at not seeing anyone else there.  
Tony expecting the confusion that followed everyone who wasn’t familiar with the house explained that it was his AI, but stopped mid way realizing he had to water down the explanation a little since he was talking to a kid.

“That’s FRIDAY my AI, she runs the house and does whatever I tell her.” He quickly added “within reason” before introducing the AI to Peter as well. “FRIDAY this is Peter”  
“Cool, so can she tell you a joke?” the eleven asked as he looked up at the ceilings as if he were waiting for the AI to pop out , he was amazed that an AI could do whatever you asked and run an entire house.  
“Uh FRI?” Tony questioned  
It only took a second before the AI’s voice filled the room once again  
“Knock Knock?” said Friday  
“Who’s there?” both Peter and Tony said in unison, Tony confused as to where this joke was going because he had never asked FRIDAY to tell a joke  
“Wooden shoe” the AI responded  
“Wooden shoe who? Peter said  
“Wooden shoe like to hear another joke?” the AI responded even though FRIDAY had no emotion in her words considering she was a robot Peter still let out an adorable giggle.

Tony didn’t know if the boy found the joke itself funny or the fact that an AI told him joke funny but he couldn’t stop the warm feeling he felt take over at the sound of the boys laugh.

As Tony looked at Peter while FRIDAY told another joke he couldn’t help but realize that the boy looked exactly like he did when he was a kid. The resemblance was definitely there it was honestly no denying that the boy was his. He was pretty much Tony’s spitting image from his golden eyes all the way down to the spacious gap between the boys two front teeth (when he was a kid he had a gap as well until he got braces as a teen.) The only difference he could spot so far was the boys unruly curly hair it was the same shade of brown as Tony’s but with wavy curls running down the boys head with bangs almost covering his eyes.

After hearing a couple of jokes from his new friend FRIDAY, Peter couldn’t stop the shiver that overtook him from still being cold even though the heat was blowing full blast he was still thawing from being outside for over an hour.  
Tony immediately noticing the shiver immediately asked “Hey do you want something to drink? I can fix you some tea or something I think” Did kids even like tea he thought to himself

“Umm yeah” Peter said hesitantly

Before guiding the boy into the kitchen he turned back around and opened the front door to check and see what Happy was doing. He was surprised to see that Happy was heading toward the porch because of the snow that was beginning to fall. It looked like Tony had gotten home just in time, who knows what could have happened to Peter if he was left out in the snow for however long.

Happy was on the phone with who Tony assumed was someone on his security team probably trying to figure out how someone was able to break in and drop a kid off without anyone being notified. Once Tony saw that Happy noticed his presence he gestured toward the crates and suitcases on the porch to be brought in. Happy still shocked and confused about the situation agreed, still not knowing what was on the note.

While Tony was getting Happy’s attention Peter took a second to look at the house, well what he could look at where he was standing. He noticed that the house was bigger than it looked on the outside at first glance. Near the front door were steps that led the second part of the house, he turned away from the steps and saw that in front of the steps was a wall that had a couch propped against it and in front of the couch a few feet away was a glass coffee table. Peter guess that this was the living room considering there was a 85 inch LED tv mounted on the wall in front of the couch and next to the couch was a comfortable looking wool reclining chair. As he looked around he was weird modern art pieces all around that probably cost thousands to maybe millions of dollars, not that Peter would know.

Tony shut the door and turned back toward the boy not noticing him looking around.

“Kitchens this way” Tony gestured

Peter looked to where Tony had moved in front of him towards the kitchen and started following him. “ok” Peter replied  
They made it into the kitchen and Peter looked around in there as well in the kitchen there was nice marble counter tops as well as a marble breakfast bar with two large chairs. The kitchen table was weird because it wasn’t a normal table with chair it was an area in the corner of the room with a large wooden table in the middle and a cool mauve pink velvet booth sort of sitting area and three chairs in front of and beside it

So far one Peter hadn’t seen any holiday decorations

Peter decided to sit at the breakfast bar in front of the kitchen sink. He climbed up the chair before sitting on his knees on the chair.  
Tony watched as Peter maneuvered himself into the chair before grabbing the tea kettle off the sink and filling it with water and putting it back on the gas stove turning it on. He turned around and walked a few feet toward the opposite cabinet quickly searching and hoping to find any type of tea that he kept for when Pepper visited. He quickly found a tin of green tea and wild berry tea.

Wild Berry or green tea?” Tony asked

“Uhh wild berry” Peter had never really had tea before so he just guessed based on which one sounded better.

“Uhh wild berry” Peter had never really had tea before so he just guessed based on which one sounded better.

Tony grabbed the tea infuser out of the draw in front of him before opening the tin and using the tiny spoon included to put into the infuser while the water boiled.  
Both sat in an awkward silence while Peter moved around occasionally while looking around the kitchen before Tony broke the silence.

“So how old are you?” Tony asked looking at the boy. He knew the boy was eleven but didn’t know how else to start up a conversation

“Eleven” Peter paused

“Today’s my birthday” he added after a second looking down as he moved his fingers so they danced across the countertop.

Tony paused for a second taking in the boys words. A _Christmas Baby_ he thought to himself, then he thought about the fact that the kids mother not only left him stranded in the cold on Christmas but also his birthday.

“Oh” Tony said quietly not knowing what else to say because shit. Should he tell the kid Happy Birthday? Merry Christmas? Neither of them sounded like they were going well for the kid.

Before he could ask another question the tea kettle started whistling signaling the water boiling Tony immediately grabbed the kettle before it got any louder. He poured the boiling water in the dark blue mug and watched the clear water turn the pinkish red color of the tea.  
He contemplated handing the mug to the boy or waiting until it cooled down a little. He decided to sit the mug in front of the boy but warned him that it was hot.

Peter softly tapped the mug testing the temperature himself and let out a soft hiss at the hot mug against his tiny fingertip. He decided against taking a sip and instead inhaled a bunch of air into his mouth to the point where his cheeks had puffed up and let out a big blow to cool down the hot steam coming from the top of the mug.

Tony watched quietly in amusement for about a minute at the little boys antics.  
Tony soon heard the sound of the front door opening before the sound of Happy coming in, Happy took a few hesitant steps probably looking for them before making his way into the kitchen.

“Boss, I called Ross he should be here in fifteen to fix the gate and replace the wiring for the security box.” Happy told Tony sneaking a few glances at the little boy

“Ok” Tony said not taking his eyes off of Peter and his antics. Now the little boy was back to making his fingers dance all over the place.

Before the room could become silent again Peter looked up at Happy.

“Hi” he said cheerfully with an adorable little wave

“Uh hi” Happy replied back awkwardly. Although Happy has 3 nieces he was never not awkward around new kids especially with how the kid popped up.

“I’m Peter” The boy continued

“Happy Hogan”

Peter cocked his head to the side in confusion and amusement “Is your name really Happy?”

Tony couldn’t help but chuckle at how fucking adorable this kid was before interrupting them and answering the question himself.

“Nah, his real name is Grumpy” Tony joked

“HaHa nice joke Tony, It wasn’t funny the first hundred times you’ve said it and it isn’t funny now” Happy said sarcastically

Peter laughed at the two men before taking a big gulp of his finally cooled down tea. He immediately scrunched his face up at the taste it tasted a little like fruit but mostly like bitter water.

Tony couldn’t help the laughter that escaped him at the boys facial expression and even Happy had to laugh because it was adorable but it was also a face he was sure he’d seen on Tony a few times.

“Do you have any sugar?” The boy said horsely being dramatic as he began clearing his throat from the awful taste

Tony looked through the same cabinet for something sweet to add to the tea “How about honey?” He asked the boy

Peter thought about it for a second trying to remember all his allergies, he couldn’t recall honey being one of them

He nodded his head before replying “that works”

Tony grabbed the bottle of natural raw honey and a teaspoon for the boy to use for it and sit on the counter in front of him.  
Peter grabbed the bottle of honey popping it open before squeezing the tube making lots of honey pour into the mug. Tony gave the boy a second before realizing the boy was adding way too much and grabbed the bottle from him.

“I think that’s enough kiddo” he said as he grabbed it and quickly closed the lid.  
“Ok” the boy didn’t argue as he started to stir the mug a little to harshly making drops of tea end up on the countertop.

Usually Tony would get annoyed at someone making a mess like that but he couldn’t bring himself to. So far the kid seemed so sweet he couldn’t understand how his mother could so something like what she did to such an adorable boy.

Peter took another gulp of his tea and this time nodding at how good the flavor was. “That’s better” he said with a nod

“That’s good kiddo” Tony replied and Happy nodded alongside him.

“So how old are you Peter?” Happy asked

“Eleven, todays my birthday” Peter replied he was about halfway done with his tea now

“Oh” Happy had paused before he replied having similar thoughts as Tony did when Peter told him.

“So you’re in what fifth grade?” Happy continued deciding against adding to the whole birthday thing

“Sixth” the boy replied before adding “I started school early, when I was four”

“Oh that’s cool” Happy said before asking “what’s your favorite subject?”

“Ummmm” the boy thought about it for a minute before he excitedly answering “Math and Science, but I like science better because we get to mix chemicals together and stuff”

“Chemicals that does sound fun” Tony said jumping into the conversation it was nice to know that like father like son the boy was into science, maybe he was into engineering as well.

“Yep” Peter said nodding his head before grabbing his mug and downing the rest of the warm tea. He then began to fiddle with his shirt sleeves before letting out a little yawn.

Tony then realized he had to set up a room for the kid to sleep in for the night especially with how late it was getting, he looked behind him at the clock on the stove and saw it was 10:46 certainly passed the normal bedtime for a kid.  
“Uh Hap, can you stay down here for a sec while I check upstairs?” Tony asked Happy. The man looked at Tony confused for a second before understanding what he was asking. “Yeah, go ahead” Happy replied

“I’ll be right back kid” Tony said looking at Peter for a second waiting for a response

“Ok” Peter replied watching Tony as he walked out the kitchen and toward the steps leaving him and Happy to continue talking.

Tony ran up the stairs and made his way down the hall toward the guest bedroom he rarely went into. He never really had company that spent the night nowadays, this room was usually used for Rhodey when he came into town.

He looked around the room and made sure everything looked fine as he turned on the bedroom light. The room itself was a pretty basic guestroom it had no décor or anything just a bed, a dresser, two nightstands and a desk in the corner. It didn’t even have a tv and the bed itself was pretty plain with a classic dark blue bedspread and dark blue sheets. He washed the sheets after anytime anyone slept in the bed so he wasn’t worried about that he just wanted to make sure everything looked ok. He left the light on before leaving the bedroom and making his way across the hall toward the guest bathroom. The bathroom looked ok as well he had to add a bath towel and washcloth to the towel rack as well a new toothbrush in the holder and a new roll of toilet tissue. Other than that everything was fine so he left the bathroom and made his way back downstairs.

Walking downstairs he could hear Happy and Peter talking but didn’t know what they were talking about. As soon as he entered the kitchen both Happy and Peter looked up at him.

“Hey Peter its getting kind of late I set up the bedroom upstairs for you, are you ready to head up?” Tony asked as he gestured toward the stairs.

Peter thought about it for a second before agreeing knowing from experience with his parents whether he agreed or not they’d still send him to bed even when he couldn’t sleep.

“Um ok” Peter replied before climbing out of the tall chair. As the boy climbed down Happy and Tony couldn’t help but notice how _tiny_ he was. To Happy, the boy looked like he could fit into his 7 year old nieces clothes easily. He was so small which was slightly worrying because he was definitely underweight for a just turned eleven year old just from looking at him. He was extremely small height wise as well.

Pulled from his thoughts Tony lead the boy into the living room where the stairs were before realizing the boy probably needed his suitcase to change into his pajamas.

“Let me grab your suitcases and we can head up” Tony said as he walked toward the two suitcases filled with all the boys clothes.  
They made there way upstairs to the guestroom and Tony explained to him where his room was incase the boy needed anything as they passed it

“Alright my room is right here if you need me” Tony said as they passed his room to continue toward what Tony guessed was Peter’s new room now.  
“Ok” Peter said although he learned from an early age to never disturb his parents for any reason at all, the house could be on fire and they still didn’t want Peter annoying them.

They stopped in the guest room and Tony sat the suitcases on the ground in front of the bed the room.  
“Do you need anything, water or something?” Tony asked leaning in the doorway.  
“No” Peter responded briefly

Tony didn’t know what else to say to make anything better so he told Peter “Ok, well the bathroom is right across the hall and if you need me I’m either in my bedroom or downstairs” before adding “You can ask FRIDAY to get me if you need me as well, right FRI?”  
“Always Boss” The AI responded. Peter smiled at the sound of FRIDAY  
“All right well goodnight” Tony added after a second before turning out of the room and grabbing the doorknob asking the boy if he wanted his door all the way closed or cracked a bit. The boy responded that he wanted his door closed.

Tony closed the door and paused outside of it letting out a small breath before heading downstairs. Inside the room Peter paused and looked at the door letting out a breath before stripping down to his star wars briefs undies and got in the soft warm bed.

What was his life going to be like now? He thought to himself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you so much to everyone who has read my fic I hope you guys enjoy this chapter again I'm new to writing so I'm always open to tips at getting better at it. Fun fact to anyone who didn't know Robert Downey Jr had a gap when he was younger so I decided to give Peter one as well because I found it adorable.  
> Again hope you guys enjoy this chapter as I find my footing with this fic.


	3. Congratulations Its A Boy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm back with another chapter. Just a sort of Trigger Warning: There are mentions of suspect physical child abuse and bruised but nothing ever happened! Peter was never physically abused but I don't want to trigger anyone reading from the mentions of it. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter!

After leaving the guestroom Tony made his way back downstairs, it was such a long night and he still had so much to do. He didn’t see himself getting any sleep that night, but hey what else is new? Once he got downstairs he saw that the house was empty signifying that Happy must have went back downstairs to see how far Ross had gotten with fixing the gate and security box. Tony looked around the living room filled with storage boxes for a second before making his way back into the kitchen to clean up. When he walked in the kitchen and saw Peter’s empty mug an idea struck him and he was quietly rushing back upstairs.

Upstairs Tony quietly went into his bedroom although the guest bedroom was closed Tony didn’t want to risk disturbing the little boy, in his room he walked to his bathroom before making his way toward the sink and finding exactly what he was looking for on the sink counter a small glass canister filled with cotton swabs. He grabbed two just to be safe before walking out of his bedroom and making his way back downstairs again.

Walking into the kitchen with a mission he went to where Peter had been seated before grabbing the dark blue mug that was now pretty much empty. He put the cotton swab on the drinking rim part of the mug and moved one of the cotton swabs along it getting the boys DNA from the mug he flip the cotton swab before doing the same to the other side, he repeated the process with the second cotton swab before moving toward one of the kitchen cabinets to grab a Ziploc bag to put them. Once the cotton swabs were in a Ziploc bag he moved towards his downstairs office to grab a marker and used the marker to write the letter P on it.

Once he finished doing that Happy had come back in to inform him that the gate and everything else was fixed. When Happy came in he had bits of wet snow on his suit showing that the snow was coming down harder than earlier. Tony made his way to the couch to sit down for the first time in what felt like hours. While Tony sit down Happy had moved closer to Tony clearly looking for an explanation for the past few hours,

“So you gonna tell me what’s going on?” Happy asked after it looked like Tony was in a trance thinking about the past few hours.

Tony leaned forward and rubbed a hand down his face before sighing “Yep, just give me a sec Hap it’s been a crazy night” He paused for a second before continuing “apparently he’s my kid” Tony started even saying that sounded so foreign to him _He had a kid, a living breathing eleven year old kid_ He thought to himself.

Tony was pulled out his thoughts when Happy replied after a long minute “Well that’s unsurprising he looks just like you, but what was he doing outside in the cold alone like that?” The man questioned

That was a good question Tony thought to himself and he honestly didn’t even know a reason other than the people raising him didn’t want him anymore and that reason wasn’t even valid. He could feel the anger in his chest at Mary’s blatant neglect.

“The only explanation given was an envelope that was pinned to his shirt that explained that they didn’t want him, they never wanted him so they were giving him to me and if I wanted I could put him in the system” Tony said

Happy looked at Tony as if he was trying to figure out if Tony was being serious or not and when he looked at Tony’s face he had never seen the man look more serious… or angry than he did in that moment. He too started to feel anger boil inside him at the thought of someone doing that to a defenseless child, if anyone ever did that to any of his 3 nieces he would have been ready to hurt someone.

“So eleven years later they what? Just decided that having a child was too much work and threw him out at first chance?” Happy couldn’t help it as his voice started rising until he was close to yelling. Tony immediately gave him a warning glance as to not disturb Peter.

“Sorry” Happy said lowering his voice.

“It’s fine I get it, I feel the exact same way. According to Mary they learned early on they were cut out for taking care of Peter and hired multiple nannies and babysitters throughout the years until that didn’t work out and they left him alone while they lived their life.” Tony said he couldn’t help the sarcasm in his voice at the end of the sentence because who the fuck felt safe to leave a child probably under the age of ten alone to fend for themselves while they traveled the world?

Thinking about the letter Tony immediately turned around realizing he never finished looking at the other contents inside of it. He got up and walked towards the small table by the front door where he usually kept his keys and other small objects. He grabbed the envelope off of it before turning back towards the couch while pulling the packet of paper out if it. Inside the envelope was the letter, a copy of Peters birth certificate, and another few pieces of paper. Pulling out the last few pieces of paper he held it in his hands and read the first few words at the top of the first page.

**Petition To Terminate Parental Rights Form**

Tony skimmed through the entire first page before going to the last page which had both Mary Parker and Richard Parker’s signatures in bold black ink.

Tony couldn’t help the feeling of shock that once again overtook him from this entire situation. They had terminated all evidence that Peter was ever their child.

Happy watched as Tony face turned into a look of shock as he read a piece of paper “What? What is it?” Happy asked now even more confused. Tony ran his finger over the signature before looking up at Happy. “They terminated their parental rights of Peter” He said still in shock. He honestly didn’t know why he was so surprised but he guess this was nail in the coffin that they really weren’t coming back and he was now all this little boy had.

He was a single father now of a kid he never knew existed, Tony didn’t know the first thing about parenting and had sworn when he was a kid giving his parents hell that he would never have kids. Now he had a kid pretty much dropped into his lap like a Christmas present and didn’t know the first thing about the kid. What was his favorite color? What was his first word? How old was he when he took his first steps? There was so much that Tony didn’t get the chance to witness because the Parkers were so selfish and now they decided to give him the kid.

But oh yeah wait, they also explained that he didn’t have to keep the kid Tony thought to himself bitterly. As if he could ever abandon that beautiful boy upstairs like Mary did. Tony didn’t even know Peter but in that moment he knew he was going to do whatever he could to be the best father for Peter.

After a few minutes Tony sat the envelope with all the papers on the coffee table to be looked at again later. The snow had started to slow down so Happy had decided it was time he went home before he ended up stranded. He of course asked Tony if he was going to be ok and that if he needed anything that he was only a call away.

Tony agreed that Happy should get home after the long night both men had and sent Happy on his way with the Ziploc bag that held the cotton swabs and told the man to get them to Helen Cho at Stark Industries in the morning. He told Happy that he would call if he needed anything and joked that it was literally the mans job to “be at his beck and call”. Happy rolled his eyes before making his way out the door to his SUV.

Tony watched Happy back out the driveway and the gates to the cabin style home close before closing the front door and leaning against it for a second taking another deep breath.

The first thing Tony was about to do was change out of his uncomfortable suit he’d been wearing the entire night from the SI Christmas dinner. It was weird to think about the fact that while he was commingling with people at the dinner someone was breaking into his home to drop a kid off on his front porch.

Tony quietly made his way back upstairs to his bedroom while FRIDAY set the alarm so no one could get in or out the house for the rest of the night. He walked straight into his gigantic closet that was filled every clothing piece you could think of even items that costed thousands or sometimes millions of dollars.

Tony changed out of his suit into a pair of black Nike trackpants and a black tank top with a fleece dark blue sweatshirt on top before slipping on a pair of cozy brown UGG slippers.

After changing into comfortable clothes, Tony left his room and couldn’t help himself as he walked to the front of the guest bedroom door where Peter slept. He thought about going in and checking on the boy but quickly decided against it when he thought about how he would have to come up with an excuse if Peter woke up and caught him.

He softly tiptoed until he was back at the stairwell and made his way back down into the living room to go through a few of the storage containers.

The first storage container he came across were filled with medical information about Peter, so his hospital records, medical records, allergies things like that.

Deciding to look at the paper that read off the boys allergies Tony was surprised to find out all the things the boy was allergic to: **severe allergy to all dairy products, kiwi, pollen, dust, penicillin, cats, dogs, birds, and he also had very sensitive skin so certain laundry detergent and body washes caused rashes.**

Majority of those things Tony could work with but with an allergy to dairy products was going to be a bit harder he would have to triple check everything before he gave it to the boy. But he still definitely had to keep an eye out for all the other things as well. He made sure to leave the paper will all the boys allergies on it out so he could always check he had everything right.

Moving on to the boys hospital records Tony of course saw how the boy was born 7 weeks premature and his actual due date was on Valentines Day which Tony found kind of funny, the kid was due on Valentines Day but came on Christmas. As he read on he was also shocked to find out that when Peter was 7 months old he was given dairy for the first time and went into anaphylactic shock by the time he was rushed to the hospital and was in a coma for a little under two months.

Wow, that’s a lot Tony thought to himself. A coma for two months as a baby, all Tony could think about is how small and alone the baby must have felt at the time. Yeah Tony was definitely going to make sure to throw out any dairy product he owned in his house.

Tony moved on the from the hospital records to the medical records and saw that Peter also suffered from asthma to the point where he was rushed to doctors to get multiple nebulizer treatments at times. The medical records folder was pretty thick with all the papers and information about Peter in it. Just from reading the first two pages Tony had come across multiple injuries Peter sustained growing up broken bones, 1st degree burns, having to get 4 stitches in his lip at one point when he was 6 years old.

Tony couldn’t stop his hand from shaking with anger at the thought of the Parkers or someone else who took care of Peter hurting him. He needed to find out what really went on in the Parker home but the only person who could tell him was the eleven year old boy sleeping upstairs.

Since Tony couldn’t do anything about it at the moment he decided to move on from medical records and opened another storage container. This container was filled with baby books and pictures of Peter. The first picture he came across was an adorable picture of the boy as a baby around maybe one or two years old dressed in a superman costume. Tony felt his heart melt at the sight of the adorable baby and immediately put the picture to the side so he could frame it later.

The second picture he came across of the boy at around the same age as the first one except this time he was dressed in an adorable pair of overalls and he was standing up looking away from the camera with his finger in his mouth while his big brown eyes seemed to be focusing on something.

The third picture he came across was a picture of Peter way older, he looked around four or five and he was facing the camera with ears that looked to big for his head popping out and a mischievous smirk on his face like he was about to get into something when the person taking the picture wasn’t looking.

Before Tony knew it he had been up for hours looking through just looking at pictures of the boy. It was now around 5:30 in the morning and the man definitely felt like it was that late or early in the morning. He decided to pack everything back in the crates for now so he could figure out where to put everything later on that day.

He then went into the kitchen to clean up the boys mug because he had forgot to earlier after getting DNA off of it an wiped down the counter before making his way upstairs to lay in his bed for a few hours. He notified FRIDAY to wake him up when Peter started showing the early signs of waking up so he could be up before the boy if he wasn’t already up.

Tony thought it was going to take him awhile to fall asleep with all the thoughts running through his head but he was wrong he was asleep with 10 minutes of laying down in his soft bed. He guess the day had finally caught up with him.

Tony had ended up waking up on his own accord at 9:27 in the morning to the sun shine in his face. He stayed in his bed for a few minutes and honestly had forgotten all that had went down a few hours prior. Then it all came rushing back to him, the whole thing just felt so surreal. He slowly sat up in his bed before stretching as he felt and heard his bones crack from being in the same position for so long. He got up out of bed and walked into the bathroom to pee and splash some water on his face. He looked in the mirror for a second as he dried his face before grabbing his phone and making his way out of his bedroom. As he walked out he checked the guest bedroom door and saw that the door was still closed like it was last night.

Going downstairs Tony immediately went straight into the kitchen to fix himself a nice hot cup of black coffee. He always kept mug under the coffee maker so he turned on his thousand dollar coffee maker and it immediately began fixing his coffee just the way he liked it. While his coffee was being fixed he saw that he had a few missed calls Pepper and a few texts from Happy telling him that he dropped the samples off to Cho and they should be ready in a few hours. Tony quickly texted him back before calling Pepper.

Pepper answered the phone the second it rang already hearing about the crazy night at Tony’s house from Happy. The second Tony heard the phone click notifying that Pepper answered he began talking. “So I’m going to assume that you already talked to Happy” Tony said before Pepper could say anything

“Uh yeah and I honestly couldn’t decide whether this was a funny prank you to came up with or what” Pepper replied she didn’t know if she believed what Happy told her or not. I mean considering Tony’s playboy past it wasn’t surprising there was a little Tony running around it was the way he popped up was the unreal part.

Tony choked on his coffee for a second at the thought of last night being a prank. “What a prank?” he spluttered “Pep are you serious?” he continued.

“I mean come on Tony someone broke in and left a kid on your doorstep? That sounds like something straight out of a movie” Pepper defended herself

“I don’t know what movies you watch Pep but I can assure you that this really happened, I was just as surprised as you are hell I still am.” Tony told her

“So what’s his name and how old is he?” Pepper asked

“His name is Peter, wait Happy didn’t tell you all this when he talked to you?” Tony pause assuming Happy had filled Pepper in on all the details

“Tony, he called me at 1 o’clock in the morning babbling on about someone breaking in and leaving a kid on your doorstep, you really think I let him get that far before I hung up assuming you two had lost your minds and decided to prank call people with crazy stories?” Pepper told him

Tony let her words sink in for a minute before he had to agree that it was hard to believe especially hearing it so late at night. “Ok you have a point” Tony said before continuing “Anyway his name is Peter and he turned 11 yesterday”

Tony heard Pepper aww for a moment before she said “Aww, a Christmas baby” Pepper said and Tony couldn’t stop the smile that crossed his face because that had been the first thing he thought about as well.

“Yep, and fun fact he was born premature so his actual due date was Valentines Day” Tony spilled to her

“Wow that crazy” Pepper replied before she realized something “wait so they not only ruined this kids Christmas but his birthday as well?” Pepper asked Tony

Tony let out a sigh at the thought before replying “Uh yeah, it seems so” he said sadly at the thought that the boy was so young and had already been through so much. Before Tony could continue he heard the sound of soft footsteps coming down the stairs. “Hey Pep I got to go I’ll call you back later” He quickly said before hanging up after hanging up Tony had quickly down his coffee and waited for the boy to enter the kitchen.

Peter had woken up at 10:00am on the dot like he did everyday that he didn’t have to go to school. He immediately rolled over to sit up in the soft warm bed before stretching hand arms above his head letting the sleep leave his body. He got up and made his way over to his suitcases to find something to wear for the day. After pulling all his clothes out the suitcase he settled on a pair of green pull on cargo shorts and a bright orange long sleeve shirt. He put the outfit on before opening the door and going into the hallway he passed by Tony’s bedroom and saw that Tony wasn’t in there so at first he assumed the man had left but as he made his way downstairs he heard the man talking to someone. Maybe Happy was still here he thought to himself.

He’d made his way into the kitchen and immediately saw Tony by the sink behind the breakfast bar like last night. “Hi” the boy greeted when he walked in

“Hey kid, uh did you sleep well” Tony inwardly cringed at how awkward he felt. He felt like a teenager all over again. Although as a teenager he never saw himself ending up in a situation like this.

“Yeah, I guess” the boy replied as he climbed his way up the chair in front of the breakfast bar.

Tony decided to leave that conversation there and instead asked the boy if he was hungry. “Are you hungry, I know all that you’re allergic to but I think I can work around that?” Tony asked

Peter didn’t really eat a lot so he usually only fixed himself cereal or stuff he could pop in the microwave at night, but other than that he wasn’t a morning person especially considering how early the eleven year old would have to leave to catch the subway and at school he had a fear the lunch people would forget his allergies and kill him.

“Um no” the boy replied

Tony didn’t really feel comfortable not feeding the kid especially since he didn’t actually know the last time the boy ate, he didn’t need the boy falling out from not eating especially since he looked really malnourished as is.

“Really I can whip you up some bacon or something” Tony told him

“I’m vegan, I cant eat meat” the boy replied.

Vegan? Tony thought to himself what the hell? What eleven year old was vegan”

Tony couldn’t help the confusion that morphed his face before he turned to look in the pantry. “Ok well I have some Cap’n Crunch Berries in here and some almond milk would you like that?” Tony asked

Peter was starting to get irritated why was he so worried about whether or not Peter ate or not, he’d eat when he felt like it like he always did. No one else cared what the boy did, it was his life not anyone else’s. Peter kicked the breakfast bar in front of him before responding “No” he snapped

Tony was a little taken aback at how quickly the boys mood had changed but had to remind himself of the long night the kid had. He decided to compromise with the kid for now. “Ok” Tony began slowly “How about I fix a bowl of Cap’n Crunch for you and you decide to eat it when you’re ready?” He asked the boy looking at him to see his reaction.

Peter sat looking at the breakfast bar pouting as he thought about it for a second. He thought about it if he agreed with Tony now it wasn’t like the man was gonna sit and wait for him to eat it so all he had to do was agree and never eat it if he didn’t want to.

In Peters mind this meant he got to keep control of the situation

“Ok” the boy agreed with a little smile.

“Ok” Tony replied back happy that they found a compromise. Tony moved to where he kept his dishes and grabbed a red bowl before pouring the cereal into it and placing the bowl in front of the boy. He then went into his Subzero Fridge to grab the almond milk and poured some into the bowl before grabbing the boy a spoon and sitting it in the bowl of cereal.

Tony and Peter sat in silence for a few minutes while Peter fidgeted in his seat looking around the room, with all the boy fidgeting Tony was a little scared the boy was going to fall out of the tall chair.

Tony was tempted to fix himself another cup of coffee but decided to wait a little bit.

Peter was the first to break the silence. “So do you live here all alone?” The boy asked

Tony replied “Well yeah, I mean I did but now you live here too”

Peter shrugged at that answer he didn’t think he was gonna be here very long or if he was Tony was probably going to leave him here like everyone else in the boys life did.

“What’s your favorite color” Tony asked the boy trying to keep the silence away.

Peter thought about it for a second before answering “Ummm, right now maybe red or blue or both” He rushed out

Tony nodded and agreed “those are some pretty cool colors, my favorite color has been red for as long as I can remember”. Peter nodded his head in agreement that red was a cool color.

As they continued to talk about favorite colors and other favorite things Tony couldn’t help but notice Peter had yet to take a bite of his cereal. He didn’t want to pester the boy about it but he also didn’t want the boy going hungry.

“What’s your favorite cereal, I notice you have yet to take bite” Tony asked as he gestured to the cereal that had quickly turned rainbow color as it started to get soggy.

The boy fiddled with his fingers as he shrugged his shoulders before replying while moving so that he was now crouched down in the tall chair “maybeeee cocoa puffs?” The boy answered.

Tony nodded his head a little distracted by the new dangerous position the boy had found himself in his attention was then brought onto a purple mark on the boys thigh that was mostly covered by the boys shorts but due to his sitting position the shorts had risen causing it to show.

“Hey what happened to your thigh” Tony asked as he gestured toward the purple bruise.

Peter looked down at the bruise before he began touching it and replied “Oh, that’s an accident” He said but left it at that and didn’t give any other explanation of how the accident happened.

That left Tony even more confused because what kind of “accident” could lead to bruises on a kid. Ok granted Tony knew kids were clumsy but he couldn’t help but think about the medical records he had began to read last night that talked about all the injuries Peter got. But if Peter was being abused and someone was taking him to the doctors after hurting him then why wasn’t the authorities called to look into it?

Before Tony could question Peter any longer FRIDAY had notified that Happy was pulling into the driveway. A smile quickly cross Peter’s face at the thought of Happy being back. Before Tony knew what was happening Peter was jumping out the chair excited to greet Happy at the door.

Since Happy had a key all he had to do was open the door and was bombarded by the tiny eleven year old.

“Happy, you’re back!” Peter exclaimed. He was so excited to see Happy again.

Happy was a little confused at the boys reaction, he didn’t even think his nieces who he had known since each of them were born reacted to seeing him like this.

“Uh hey kid” Happy said awkwardly. He definitely wasn’t expecting this.

“So, How are you?” Peter asked as he walked with Happy into the living room.

“I’m alright” Happy replied slowly

Tony seeing the whole interaction was confused as well, he had never seen a kid so excited to see Happy like ever. He didn’t even think that Peter and Happy interacted that much honestly only when they were all in the kitchen together last night and the two minutes he went upstairs.

“Hey Peter, why don’t you watch tv in here for a second while me and Hap go over some boring stuff?” Tony asked Peter trying to get a few minutes alone with Happy so he could read the DNA test results.

Peter pouted because he wanted to spend time with his new friend. Happy immediately intervened knowing the first signs of a kid about to throw a fit. “ Hey its only for a sec kid let me talk to your dad really quick then I’ll come back and watch tv with you” Happy compromised with the kid. People always talked about how Happy wasn’t a true people person and they weren’t lying but one thing Happy was a good at was speaking kid.

Neither of the men even notice that Happy had called Tony “Peters dad”

“Ok” Peter agreed before letting Tony lead him to the couch. The boy sat on the couch and Tony turned the tv on before handing the boy the remote so he could choose what he wanted to watch.

Both men made there way into the kitchen and Happy pulled the envelope out of his suit jacket pocket when they were far enough so Peter couldn’t hear them.

“Congratulations, It’s a boy” Happy said

“Wait you already opened it” Tony asked confused as to how Happy already knew

“What? No but even without that test we already know you’re his dad” Happy replied

Tony grabbed the envelope out of Happys hand and didn’t waste a second to rip it open.

He skimmed toward the bottom of the page where it said

**Probability of Paternity: 99.99999999%**

Yep he was the father.

Tony looked at the results in his hands for second letting it all sink in. While he was doing that Happy looked at him waiting to hear the results.

“Well you’re right with the congratulations, it is a boy” Tony replied

They didn’t want to leave the boy alone for too long especially since they promised it was only going to be a few minutes before Happy would be back to watch tv with him but before that Tony wanted to clear any confusion that Peter might have about who he was to him.

So Tony made his way into the living room while Happy stayed back for a few more minutes.

“Hey Petey, can we talk about something important real quick?” Tony asked

Peter was watching his favorite tv show The Amazing World of Gumball when Tony came in. “I guess” The boy replied

Tony had to laugh in his head a little because that seemed to be the boys answer to everything. He had FRIDAY mute the tv for a second before he sat on the coffee table in front of Peter so he knew he had the boys full attention.

He honestly didn’t even know how to begin this conversation honestly but here goes.

“Before your mom dropped you off here did she tell you who I was?” he asked

Peter looked elsewhere before answering “Yeah she told me you were my real dad” The boy just said it as is he didn’t really have any emotion behind it.

“Ok, that’s good that I don’t have to explain all of that” Tony said awkwardly “Well, um you’re going to be staying here with me now and I’m going to take care of you now” he continued while looking at Peter trying to gage the boys reaction.

Peter had turned his head up so that he could watch his show while Tony spoke. “Ok, can I watch my show now?” Peter asked

That wasn’t the reaction Tony was looking for but he guesses it could have been worst. “Uh yeah, I’ll send Happy in to come watch with you” he replied before getting up and walking back toward the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've made it to the end of the chapter! I hope you enjoyed it please leave comments I really appreciate them.
> 
> Links to Peters baby pics:  
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DC8A2hrXcAA6jht.jpg  
> https://pm1.narvii.com/6638/84a28527a5cfdc9b4ea973e2bbaf91094941a98b_hq.jpg  
> https://i.pinimg.com/originals/95/37/df/9537df617818a09cb92b809e8ae99581.png


	4. Baby's First Tantrum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Tony visit Happy's family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! New Chapter, I am so surprised that this story has gotten over 1000 hits! I am so happy I never expected this story to get as much attention as it has gotten! Thank you so much to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story so far

It was now officially 2 days after Christmas meaning Tony Stark had officially been taking care of another living breathing person for 2 days. As funny as it sounded it was also shocking to Tony because could barely keep a plant alive for more than a week but so far taking care of Peter hadn’t been going as bad as Tony thought it would… or maybe the shock of the whole situation still had yet to set in.

Yesterday Happy had stayed over for a few hours and watched tv with Peter for a few hours. Tony could see Peter was getting pretty antsy and fidgeting around with only the tv to keep him occupied and thought about the fact that maybe he should get the kid some toys to play with. Did 11 year old’s even play with toys? He thought to himself. It had been decades since he was that age and he honestly couldn’t remember, but then again Christmas was 2 days ago… as well as the kids birthday so maybe he should take him out to get some things.

While Happy kept Peter entertained Tony took the time moving back and forth unpacking all of Peters things from the storage boxes and finding places for them. He would need to get picture frames for the pictures of Peter as well as a small storage container to organize the boys medical and hospital files. Other than that he was able to empty almost all the crates except 2. His living room looked like a living room again. While Tony moved around the house he couldn’t help but feel jealous at the way it seemed like Peter was bonding with Happy.

It felt like Peter took to Happy so easily as if he were the actual dad around here.

After Tony had finished putting everything up it was coming up to almost 4:00 pm so he figured he needed to figure out dinner for the kid so he had FRIDAY find an easy vegan recipe he could make for dinner. FRIDAY had found an easy recipe for vegan chili and it looked pretty promising to Tony so he decided to try it out. He quickly realized he had barely any of the ingredients to make the chili so he had FRIDAY send the list of ingredients to Tony so he could go out and pick them for Tony to make the dinner. Tony also sent Happy a text explaining to him to double check that all the ingredients he picked up had no DAIRY in it or even had a chance of being cross contaminated with dairy.

The second Peter heard that Happy was leaving he immediately started throwing a fit and begging him to stay, just for a little while longer. When Tony and Happy both explained that Happy was just going to the store and that he was going to back he calmed down a little but they could both see he was still upset. The whole situation was odd to both men with how fast Peter had attached himself to Happy the way he did and neither could come up with an explanation as to why. It also worried both the men when they thought about the boys reaction since Happy was probably going to leave soon after dropping the groceries off.

Tony was able to cook the chili and it only took an hour after Happy came back with everything, and it came out pretty good in his opinion for his first time making anything like it. But he was a little discourage when Peter only ate about 3 bites before declaring that he was done. Especially since the boy didn’t eat the cereal he gave him that morning as well the fact that he didn’t eat lunch.

Tony had decided to leave it alone that night as a way to avoid Peters reaction that morning when he tried to fix the boy breakfast but he knew it was yet another thing he was going to have to look into.

Unsurprisingly the boy threw yet another fit when Happy tried to leave again and Tony couldn’t help but feel rejected at the way Peter begged Happy to stay for “just one more episode”. Happy had explained to Peter that he had to get home but he would come back and see him soon. Peter still seemed upset but probably figured that Happy was going to leave either way so he gave up and went back to watch his show.

As soon as Happy left Peter’s entire mood had changed, and even though Tony had offered to watch the show with the boy Peter had rejected that offer and shut Tony out. Once again Tony felt rejection course through him. He couldn’t understand what he could have already done in a day that made Peter not like him. He decided to leave the boy be as he went in the kitchen to clean up.

After cleaning up the kitchen Tony couldn’t help but feel tired from not only getting a few hours asleep that morning but also all the moving around he had done as well as cooking that day. It was pure luck that when Tony went into the living room Peter was yawning and ready to head up as well.

Today, Tony honestly didn’t have any plans for the day until Happy had called him at 12:30 noon and told him that Happy’s sister Nancy had invited them over for dinner (yes them because Happy couldn’t wait to spread the news that Tony Stark now had a kid).

Tony hesitated for a minute since this would be him and Peters first day out the house together but then he thought about the fact they would have to leave the house eventually so he agreed.

Tony found Peter in front of the tv watching his favorite show (at least it seemed like his favorite show because he had yet to see the boy watch anything else). Tony walked into the living room and sat on the arm of the couch before he began.

“Hey Peter, I was thinking we could leave the house and spend the day with Happy’s family?” Tony explained to Peter

Peter kept looking at the tv before responding “Will Happy be there” the boy asked

Tony scrunched his face in confusion at the question, he thought he made it pretty clear that Happy was going to be there. “Uh, yeah kid also his nieces and sisters as well as her husband.” He replied

“Well if Happy’s gonna be there then yeah” The boy replied bouncing up and down on the couch for a second.

“Ok, then well go ahead and get ready so we can head out” Tony told him. It seemed like the boy was getting more comfortable around the house because this morning he had came down in just his underwear with a blanket wrapped around him that he had found in the guest room.

The boy nodded his head before getting up and making his way toward the stairs, that’s when Tony realized he should start getting ready as well. A few minutes after Peter went upstairs Tony followed suit and headed into his bedroom.

Upstairs Tony had started out in the bathroom and splashed some water on his face before grabbing his razor to shave his face into his signature goatee mustache, he then grabbed his hair products and did his hair the way he liked it before going into his room to pick out what he was going to wear for the day. Since they were only going to see Happy’s family who he had been around on several occasions he opted for a white AC/DC t shirt with a pair of jeans and a pair of black and white Nikes.

In the guestroom Peter had picked out a pair of dark grey sweatpants with a black Star Wars t shirt and a dark blue hoodie that had light blue and orange stripes toward the top. He then slipped on his socks and the only pair of shoes he owned a pair of dark blue new balances. He stuffed the shoelaces into the shoes like he always did before opening the door and making his way back downstairs.

Peter finished getting dressed about 10 minutes before Tony so he sat on the couch and watched his show while he waited for Tony. Tony came down a few minutes later and was shocked to see that the boy was already ready to go, but then again people always told Tony how long he took to get ready.

“Already kid, lets go” Tony said once he got to the last step.

Peter got up and Tony had FRIDAY cut the tv off while Peter walked toward him. Tony grabbed his grey coat out of the coat closet when he realized something, Peter only had on a thin hoodie which definitely wasn’t enough to combat the cold weather outside.

“Peter you forgot to grab your coat its freezing outside, go back upstairs and grab it” He told the boy

Peter rolled his eyes as he continued toward the door before gesturing toward the zip up hoodie he was wearing “This is my coat” he said

Tony couldn’t help the annoyance he felt at the kid rolling his eyes at him when he was right, there was no way he was letting the kid walk outside in 40 degree whether without a coat. “You don’t have any other coat?” He asked the boy

“No” The boy said as he started twisting the front door ready to leave the house.

Tony sighed before going back in the coat closet to grab a coat for the boy, it was going to be gigantic on the boy but better than letting the boy go outside without anything. He found a black North Face puffer coat before handing it to the boy.

“Well, put this on and later we will get you your own coat” He told the boy

“I don’t need that, I wear this all the time and I’m always fine” the boy argued

Tony couldn’t help but mirror the boys eye rolling at how difficult the kid was being all he literally had to do was put the coat on and they could be out the door.

“I don’t care if you were fine before Peter, its literally 40 degrees outside put the jacket on or we’re not going anywhere” Tony replied to the boy

Next Peter did something that Tony would have never expected from the boy. Peter stomped his foot before literally throwing himself onto the floor screaming “NO!”

Was this kid serious right now? All this over a coat? Tony couldn’t believe how quickly Peter’s behavior had changed. He could feel a headache coming on.

“Well I guess you don’t want to see Happy” Tony told Peter as he began walking back toward the living room

“No!” Peter cried before kicking his feet against the floor making no move to get up.

About 10 minutes later Peter had stopped kicking and screaming so Tony felt it was ok to ask Peter if he was going to put the coat on now so they could leave.

Peter glared at Tony before snatching the coat out of his hands and putting it on the coat pretty much swallowed the boy whole. “You’re mean” Peter said as he continued to glare at Tony

Yeah I’m mean, Tony thought to himself sarcastically.

They finally made it out the door and Tony walked to his sleek black Audi S4 with Peter following behind him.

Tony hopped into the driver’s seat while Peter got into the backseat, the boy immediately made work to pull the gigantic coat off the second he was comfortable in the car.

Tony started the car causing the heat to come on full blast before turning toward Peter and seeing him looking outside the window. The boy hadn’t really seen the outside of the house since it was so dark when he was dropped off.

“Put your seatbelt on” Tony told Peter. Peter still annoyed by not getting way in the house, roughly tugged on the seatbelt and pulled it around his body to click into the other part before pulling the belt from around him so it was behind his back on the seat.

Tony put his seatbelt on before pulling out of the driveway. The ride to Happy’s sister house was pretty quiet, with Peter looking out the window at the sights most of the time. It wasn’t a long ride considering Tony knew all the backroads to make getting back into the city quicker, so they were in Queens, NY within about 35 minutes into the drive. To someone else that may seem like a long drive but Tony was used to the commute considering he usually drove to Stark Industries about 2 or 3 days out of the week.

To get to Nancy (Happy’s sister) house they had to pass through Queens considering she lived about 15 minutes from Queens. Once they turned down the street to Queens, Peter immediately sat up straight in his seat and said “Hey, my apartment is down that way” as he gestured toward the opposite direction.

Huh so his kid was from Queens, Tony thought to himself. “Really?” Tony asked him. He didn’t think to correct the boy that technically it wasn’t his apartment anymore.

“Yep, and my school is like 3 or 4 streets down” Peter replied

That’s when Tony realized, oh yeah the kid is in school. Yet another headache he was going to have to figure out within the next few days. Tony felt another headache come on from the fact that he was going to have to go to the kid’s school and sort that out.

The last 5 minutes of the drive was silent as Peter continued to look at the familiar sights. One thing the boy loved about Queens was he got to go where he wanted whenever he wanted all by himself.

Tony parked the car before turning the car off, before getting out of the car he turned around reminding the boy to put the jacket back on already picking up that he was probably going to try to “forget” it in the car.

Peter was a little surprised that Tony had picked up on his game but did what the man said considering he only had to keep it on for a second to go in the house.

Tony knocked on the door and was greeted by Happy’s sister Nancy.

“Hey, Stark long time no see” Nancy said

“Yeah” He paused as he thought about it for a second he guessed it had been awhile since he had spent last Christmas visiting Rhodey and his mom. “I guess it has been awhile” he continued

The holidays were usually a rough time for Tony considering he had no living relatives and all. When he was younger after his parents first died the man would usually find himself getting blackout drunk and having sex with multiple women during the time to forget the pain of being alone around the holidays. As he got older and made more friends who turned into family they began inviting him to spend the holidays with them and depending on how he felt at times he would take them up on their offer.

So yeah, he was pretty familiar with Happy’s family.

Nancy gestured for them to come in out of the cold and moved out of the way so they could get in the apartment. Nancy and her husband lived in a nice cozy apartment with their 3 little girls. The place was small to Tony’s standards of course but it fit the family well.

Once they were inside, Nancy immediately gushed at Peter. “Aww, Tony he looks just like you” Nancy told him without taking her eyes off Peter.

“Hi!” The little boy greeted with a toothy smile.

“Hello, and what is your name?” Nancy questioned

“Peter!” He replied back.

“Well why don’t you make yourself comfortable Peter, I’m sure my girls would be happy to meet you” Nancy said as she gestured toward the living room where two out of the three girls were.

“Ok” Peter said as he took the coat off, throwing it onto the ground for Tony to pick up before making his way to the living room so the two adults could talk.

Tony rolled his eyes as he was left to pick up after the boy.

“He is so adorable, Tony” Nancy gushed as she looked at the boy making his way into the living room

“When he wants to be” Tony replied back

The second Peter walked into the living room he was able to see the entire floor plan of the apartment so he crossed the living room and went into the dining room where he saw Happy sitting.

“Happy!” Peter greeted

“Hey kid” Happy greeted back

While Happy and Peter began to talk, Tony and Nancy continuing their conversation.

“Hey, random question but is Liz coming by later” Tony asked Nancy

Liz or Elizabeth was Happy’s youngest sister. She was in her late 30’s and the “fun one” out of the siblings considering she wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids, then again Happy was the same way but he certainly wasn’t fun. She was also a psychologist, so Tony wanted to get her opinion on some of Peter’s behavior.

“You actually just missed her” Nancy replied back

Damn it, Tony thought to himself. Another thing about Liz was she lived in Colorado and only came around for the holidays.

“She’ll be in town until New Years though” Nancy added when she saw Tony’s reaction

“Ok” Tony paused “Yeah ok, that’s good” Tony continued

Nancy and Tony made their way into the living room and then the dining room when they spotted Happy and Peter in there.

“Kid, you didn’t want to play with the other kid?” Tony asked as he sat in the dining room chair next to him

Peter shrugged his shoulders as he continued fidgeting around

Happy and Tony gave each other a look finding it odd the kid didn’t want to be around the other kids near his age.

Nancy then offered Peter something to drink.

“Um, do you have apple juice?” Peter asked

Nancy acted like she was thinking about it for a second before responding “Apple juice? Of course I have apple juice that’s all this little girl like to drink” she said as she gestured toward Maisy the youngest of the three girls.

As Peter drunk his juice he couldn’t help but feel jealous at all the gifts the girls had gotten. They had gotten so many toys and stuff, he didn’t think he had ever gotten that many toys even when people gave him toys when he was younger. Gifts had pretty much stopped in the Parker household when the last nanny went away when Peter was 8.

While Peter sat in his chair sulking, Tony couldn’t help but notice the expression on the boys face at the girls happily playing.

After a few minutes the oldest girl Jessie who was 9 had come over to annoy Happy. Peter watched as Happy interacted with his niece before the girl made her way over to Tony to annoy him as well. Peter just watched on feeling out of place.

Then the middle girl Ally came over as well to see what was going on. Before long the girls had convinced Tony to come check out all their gifts and play with them.

Tony let the girls lead him over to the living room couch, before he sat down and let them show him all the cool new toys they got for Christmas.

While Peter sat back in the dining room with Happy the little boy couldn’t help the unfamiliar feeling that coursed through him seeing his dad play with other kids.

He couldn’t help but think to himself, was he too old for that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You've made it to the end of the chapter! Well Peter has his first of many tantrums lol. Just to add in case anyone's confused as to why Peter made such a big deal over putting a jacket on it wasn't about the jacket itself, it was about the fact that no one ever told Peter what he had or didn't have to wear no matter what the weather was outside so when Tony told Peter he had to wear the jacket or they weren't going anywhere to Peter it felt like Tony was trying to take away his control and to a kid with RAD control is the only thing they have so they try to keep it no matter the consequences. Just to let you guys know this chapter was a filler chapter if it seems like it was going slow. This chapter was just to fill in and add to Peters behavior in the next chapter. On that note I still hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. Again thank you so much for all the love this fic has gotten so far and please comment your guys opinion on the story so far!


	5. New Years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I meant to update yesterday but I've been so busy. I'm hoping to get better at updating but I honestly cant make any promises. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and like I always say I'm open to any feedback and tips.

January 1

Today was New Years and officially a week since Tony found out he had a son. The week had gone by so fast but at the same time it still felt like it went pretty slow in some ways. Tony would honestly say it felt like the longest week of his life.

After spending a few hours with Happy's family a few days ago they had since been in the house. Being alone with Peter these last few days helped Tony learn some things about his kid but also left him with more questions about Peter’s behavior.

Some things Peter did was anytime Tony tried to tell the boy to do something it felt like Peter always felt the need to fight him on it. Tony could ask Peter to do the smallest things for example eating, Tony had yet to get Peter to eat anything throughout the day and at dinner the boy still wouldn’t finish a single meal.

Another example was Peter’s reaction to touch, Tony had found out the boy flinched at being touched randomly when he reached near the boy one day and Peter flinched once he was close to proximity of him. When Tony noticed that, it just added more into his suspension that Peter was abused.

Tony couldn’t help the anger along with other feelings he had at the thought.

Other than that another thing he noticed was how withdrawn Peter was when they were alone. Peter hardly gave Tony the time of day, all he wanted to do was sit and watch tv in the living room. Tony could definitely tell that the boy got bored easily of watching tv but there wasn’t anything else child friendly that the kid could do. He planned on changing that soon.

It wasn’t like Tony wasn’t trying to bond or get to know the kid, it was like Peter didn’t want him to. He’d try to spark up conversations with the boy and Peter would answer in short responses, the only way it seemed Tony could bond with Peter was watching tv with him.

Tony had no plans for them today and was really looking forward to doing nothing before the holidays were over and he would have the weight of the world on the shoulders considering all he had to deal with along with Peter. But he also knew at some point he would have to go back to Happy's family house so he could talk to Happy's sister Elizabeth about Peters behavior before she left town.

So he figured they should head over there pretty early in the day so they could get back home and Tony could get ready for tomorrow.

Which was why he was getting himself and Peter ready now so they could be out the house by 1:30pm. Luckily once Tony mentioned they were leaving the house Peter seemed to perk up and rushed to get ready. He didn’t even complain when Tony made him put on the big jacket like he did the other day. Maybe being cooped up in the house for the past few days had gotten to the boy, Tony thought to himself.

They were out the house by 1:15 which was even better in Tony’s opinion and made it to Nancy’s house at around 2. Once Happy opened the door, Peter immediately hugged him and wanted to spend time with him. As soon as Tony walked in he was quickly able to find Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was youngest of Happy’s siblings in her mid 30s, she was average height standing at 5’5 and had a thin figure and was a brunette with dazzling blue eyes. She was the fun one out of her siblings considering she did fun things like traveling to many different places but also because of her bubbly personality. She was the fun one out of her siblings.

“Hey Stark, long time no see” Elizabeth greeted Tony with a smile once she saw him.

“Hey Liz” Tony greets as he sits down at the table next to her.

When Tony doesn’t say anything else Elizabeth decides to lead the conversation. “So a little birdy told me you have a little Stark running around”

Tony let out a chuckle “Does this little birdy happen to go by the name of Harold?” Tony joked back. They dove into a conversation about how crazy it must have been to find out Tony had a kid along with how things were going and what Peter was like. Tony honestly didn’t really have much to say about the kid considering he didn’t really know Peter yet and it seemed like Peter didn’t want him to.

Tony was happy that they were on the topic of Peter because now he could tell her about Peters odd behavior and see her take on it.

“Let’s just say, it’s been a very trying time” Tony told her. “It feels like I’m doing everything wrong” he continued

“Tony I’m pretty sure every new parent feels that way, this is something new and big it’s not like you had time to prepare for being a parent and even if you did you would still probably second guess everything” she told him

Tony thought about what she said and in a way he knew she was right that every parent probably did feel like everything they did was wrong at first, but did those thoughts ever go away? “Yeah I mean I guess” Tony began with a sigh “I just feel like there’s so much I don’t know about him and when I try to talk to him it feels like he deflects and puts a wall up” he deflects and puts a wall up, and don’t even get me started on trying to tell him to do something he just throws a complete fit about it”

Elizabeth contemplated what Tony was saying and honestly wasn’t surprised about anything Tony was saying, with kids who have been moved around it’s hard for them to really settle and bond with their guardians considering they don’t know how long they’re going to stay there. Even though it was a different case with Peter than it was with foster kids or kids who were taken out of difficult living situations the boy most likely still had the same issues. On top of that nobody but Peter really knew what went on in his household, so there was no say on the way Peter was brought up.

Elizabeth herself didn’t really deal with kids in her field but she did have friends and associates who did, and she heard numerous times about the problems that kids go through in general and how kids had a different thought process than adults but not a lot of people understood that. She couldn’t understand what Peter was thinking dealing with all that he dealt with in his life on top of being a child.

Elizabeth saw the look of defeat Tony had on his face and said “Give it some time, I mean this is just the first week. Work on starting a routine and as time goes on he will hopefully open up to you more and you guys can move forward. Of course as a therapist myself I have to say you should definitely look into getting him into therapy whenever you can, but overall just be patient with him.”

Tony couldn’t help but agree with what she was saying and hoped she was right about Peter eventually opening up to him. “Yeah, ok” Tony began “By any chance do you know any child psychologists in New York?”

Elizabeth smiled at Tony before saying “I’ll send Harold a list to give you”

Tony and Peter spent a few more hours at Nancy’s house and Tony couldn’t help but notice Peter was a little less withdrawn this time around. He seemed a little more comfortable and didn’t spend the whole time sitting at the table like last time. He still looked out of place though.

They got back home at around 6 and Peter of course was bored finally done with tv being his only means of entertainment.

They got back home at around 6 and Peter of course was bored finally done with tv being his only means of entertainment. The second they walked through the door Peter was whining.

Peter threw himself on the couch “I’m bored” he whined. Tony thought for a minute, he knew he really needed to get some child friendly things for Peter but at the moment he didn’t have anything. That’s when he thought about his StarkPad, he didn’t know why it slipped his mind before but he was happy he thought about it now.

“Hang on, I may have something” Tony said as he took his coat off and headed upstairs where he saw the StarkPad last.

He came back downstairs with the StarkPad before sitting next to Peter who had sat up interested in what Tony had. Tony unlocked the StarkPad before clicking on the App Store so he could download games for Peter.

He leaned closer to Peter so he could see all the games he liked and ended up downloading tons of games before leaving the boy to watch tv and play on the StarkPad. Now that Peter was taken care of Tony went on his phone to see if he had any important emails regarding SI, he of course did and responded to a few using his phone since his StarkPad was in dispose.

It was nearing closer and closer to bedtime especially since Tony wanted to get Peter into bed early for their big day tomorrow. Tony had to go into Stark Industries for a little bit tomorrow considering it was technically the first day back for Pepper and in turn Tony’s first day back as well cause he needed to make sure everything went smoothly for the week.

So after going through emails Tony started on dinner, tonight he was making spaghetti. The past few days he had made multiple different meals for Peter thinking that maybe the boy was a picky eater but he had yet to see Peter take more than 2 or 3 bites before claiming he was done,

Spaghetti was easy for Tony even with all of Peters allergies, from a young age Tony watched his mother Maria make it and she eventually taught him how to make it as well. He even knew how to make spaghetti from scratch all the way down to the noodles, he didn’t tonight but one day he would be able to make it for Peter.

“Peter come in here, dinners ready!” Tony called

A few minutes after fixing his and Peters bowl, the boy dragged into the kitchen complete invested in the StarkPad. Peter sat the tablet down on the breakfast bar before lifting himself up into his favorite seat immediately bringing his attention back to his game.

Tony took a few bites enjoying dinner before he looked up and noticed that Peter had all his attention on his game and had yet to take a bite.

“Peter eat your food” Tony said annoyed

Peter continued playing subway surfers and acted as if he didn’t hear Tony.

“Peter” Tony said sternly

Peter was still invested in the game and gave no reaction that he was listening to Tony. Tony had lost all his patience and snatched the tablet from in front of Peter.

That grabbed Peters attention. “Hey! Give it Back” He yelled

“You can have it back after you finish eating” Tony said turning the StarkPad off and sitting it on the counter.

Peter was now angry and let out a deep breath before he moved his hand quickly in front of him and swiped the bowl off the breakfast bar causing spaghetti to splatter across the floor and the bowl to break.

After throwing the spaghetti on the floor Peter looked up at Tony with a look of defiance on his face as he waited to see what Tony was gonna do about it.

Tony couldn’t believe that the boy had just did that and looked at Peter in shock for a second. After a moment of silence he said “Go to your room”

Peter pushed himself out of the chair and stomped toward the stairs before running up them into his room and slammed the bedroom door. Tony didn’t know how to feel about what just happened, he was angry about the boys behavior but he didn’t understand it. He’d been trying to feed the kid for the past week and to no avail had the finished a plate yet and then today this happened. At no time today did Peter show any sign of a tantrum or even any discomfort but then again children were unpredictable.

That still gave him no reason as to Peters behavior though, and everyday it just felt like it was getting worst. After finishing up his spaghetti he made work of cleaning up the mess the boy had made. That gave both of them enough time to calm down. But now that he had to go upstairs and talk to Peter.

He didn’t even know what to say or how to even begin that conversation. He made his way upstairs and knocked on the close door.

“Yes?” Peter asked. Tony opened the door and made his way into the bedroom, it was silent for a second when Tony realized Peter wasn’t going to say anything else.

“Kid, what was that down there” Tony asked. Peter fiddled with his fingers as Tony talked. “Why did you throw your food like that” he continued

Peter shrugged his shoulders “I didn’t want spaghetti”

Tony looked at the boy confused because that wasn’t a true explanation, he didn’t want spaghetti so he threw it? “Ok? So why didn’t you say that?” He asked

Peter shrugged again looking elsewhere, when Peter didn’t answer his question Tony sighed “alright, well what do you want to eat?” he asked

Peter looked like he was thinking about it before he said “I don’t know, not spaghetti” he continued “I wanna play on the tablet”

“Peter you have to eat something, you’ve barely eaten all week” Tony said

“Nuh Uh” Peter shook his head

“Uh Huh” Tony couldn’t help but mimic back. “Look how about I fix you something else tonight and tomorrow we will go the store and grab all the things you like to eat” Tony compromised

Peter contemplated for a second clearly seeing that Tony wasn’t going to let this go “What about the tablet” he asked

Tony thought about it and decided no more tablet for the rest of the night considering this is what got them in this situation to begin with “No tablet for the rest of the night” He said

Peter let out a huff and pouted “What?! Why not!” He cried “I didn’t even do anything” he continued

A look of confusion took over Tony’s face because no way did the boy forget what went on downstairs. “You didn’t do anything? So what was that downstairs Peter?”

Peter continued to pout as Tony got off his bed and headed towards the door “Come on, lets go” Tony said once Peter made no move to get up. He held his hand out waiting for the boy get up as he sulked.

Peter got off the bed and grabbed onto Tony’s hand, the man was actually surprised the boy actually grabbed his hand since it seemed he hated when Tony touched him.

Peter let Tony lead him to the kitchen as they went and found him something to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys like this chapter, I feel like I ended it on such an awkward note. Please comment what you guys think of this chapter.


	6. Hold Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Peter go shopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and sorry for the slow update. I didn't reread over this chapter so there are probably tons of errors so my bad... but I was super ready to get this chapter out.

January 2 

It was the day after New Years and today was Tony’s first day back at work. Tony was nervous about taking Peter out on in actual outing where there would be more people there than when they went to visit Happys family. Technically SI wasn’t open today but they needed to make sure everything was ready for it to open up tomorrow. So that meant only the necessary people were to come in today bringing the number of employees down but it was still a lot of people that Peter had never been around.

It was early in the morning since Tony had to get himself ready and get Peter ready while also attempting to feed the kid something. To someone else that didn’t have a kid like Peter that probably sounded easy but Peter somehow made even the simplest things hard. 

“Peter, it’s time to get up” Tony said as he walked into Peters room and turned the light on. It was significantly a lot earlier than the boy was used to waking up on holiday, with it being barely 8:30. Of course on a normal school day the boy woke up even earlier than that but this wasn’t a school day. 

The boy let out a groan at the bright light before turning over onto his stomach and pulling the covers over his head and burying his face in his pillow. 

“Peter come on, up and at em” Tony said as Peter showed no sign of getting up.

“I’m tired” the boy whined as he curled impossibly further into the bed. Tony couldn’t help but agree with Peter, he was tired himself but work was calling. 

“I know you’re tired, I’m tired too. Get dressed for me and then we’ll eat breakfast and you can sleep on the ride there.” Tony told him

Peter turned over on his back and pulled the covers down “where are we going anyway?” he asked blinking away at the bright light. 

Huh, he forgot to explain to Peter that he had to go into the office last night thought Tony. It honestly wasn’t all that surprising that it slipped his mind after Peters tantrum. Thinking back on it Tony didn’t even think he had ever mentioned what he did for a living not that most kids cared, but it was still a big deal to have one of the richest people in the world as a father. 

“I have to go into the office for a few hours today” he explained. Peters face turned into a look of confusion at the idea that he had to go as well. “What does that have to do with me?” He asked. 

Tony could already tell he was going to be going in late considering New York traffic, he sighed “Peter, I don’t have anyone to watch you so you have to come with me” Tony explained  
Peter still didn’t make any move to get up and said “So? I stay by myself all the time” 

“You used to stay by yourself, that’s not happening anymore” Tony said not realizing he wasn’t getting them out the door any faster and instead ruining Peters whole mood at the thought of yet another thing in his life changing. 

“I’m staying here” Peter said completely ignoring what Tony said. 

Tony could already tell this was going to be a long day. “Uh kid no you’re not, now get up and get dressed” Tony said, his voice raising a little. 

“You can’t tell me what to do, Im staying here” Peter replied 

“Peter” Tony paused trying hard not to lose his patience. When Peter showed no signs of paying attention to Tony he walked further into the room before he at the edge of the bed. Once he was at the bed he reached over and pulled the covers off the boy. 

Peter continued to lay on his side facing away from Tony. “Peter, this isn’t a game get up now.” Tony said using a more stern voice. Tony could feel himself loosing patience and getting annoyed with Peter and unbeknownst to him Peter was picking up on his aggravation and feeding it the more annoyed Tony got. 

“I’m staying here” Peter insisted. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t stay here by himself his parents would often leave the eleven year old alone for weeks at a time and he was fine. 

Tony internally groaned at the boys words “Peter, I’m not going to tell you again”. Tony paused “Get up now” 

“No! I wanna stay here! Peter screamed. And yep, Tony thought to himself the headache had finally made itself known. It wasn’t even 9am yet and Tony already felt like it had been a long day. 

Tony walked out of the room to cool off, this whole week with the kid felt like a nightmare the boy fought him on every little thing it seemed. He had to get out of that room before he messed up and did something he regretted. He refused to turn into Howard. 

Going downstairs Tony plopped down on the couch with a sigh. He bent forward and rubbed his hand down his face. He knew he wasn’t cut out for this, he was never cut out to be a child’s parent. A father, even the word sounded foreign to Tony, he didn’t know the first thing about being a father, his father definitely wasn’t a good example. 

Ever since Peter was dropped on his doorstep he felt like he was failing at this, and anyone who knew Tony Stark knew that he never failed at anything. The more he tried the more it felt like Peter was pushing him away and he didn’t know what to do about it.  
He had never wanted kids but now that he had one he refused to let him down. Tony refused to turn into Howard but the smaller more insecure part of himself felt like maybe he wasn’t cut out for this and should give up.

Before Tony could put more into those thoughts he immediately wiped them out of his mind. Peter had already been through so much in his life and had been abandoned already by the people who were supposed to love and take care of him without a second thought. The kid had already been hurt enough to last an entire lifetime and Tony knew that Peter was most likely taking his anger over the last week out on him and he couldn’t blame the kid but at the same time he couldn’t stop his patience from running thin when trying to get Peter to do something.

He’d just have to keep trying to get through to his kid. 

Tony got up and made his way back upstairs. Round two he thought to himself as he got closer to Peters room. Walking into Peters room he noticed that the boy was still curled in the same position he left him in, facing away from the door. 

This time he walked onto the other side of the bed so he could be in front of Peter. He kneeled down beside the bed. Peter was huddled up under the cover with only his face popped out and the rest of his body curled up. He watched as Tony came closer and sat in front of him. 

Tony reached his hand out to push the blankets back a little before deciding last minute against it since Peter had a weird thing about being touched. Tony laid his head down on his folded arms on the bed for a minute, just looking at Peter. He once again felt like he was looking at a mirror, all he saw was himself in Peter. 

Looking at Peter, Tony wondered what was running through the boys head. He wondered what Peter was thinking and was tempted to ask but was scared it would lead to the boy throwing another tantrum or screaming at him again. 

This time Tony was going to try really hard not to lose his patience and let the boy win, as he directed him out of bed and to get dressed. He decided that maybe if he talked to Peter and maybe promised him to take him around the city since the boy always seemed to like being on the go if the last few times they went out was a sign. 

“Peter” Tony began “I really need you to get dressed” Tony continued. “I have to go into the office for a few hours and I’m not leaving you here alone” 

When Peter opened his mouth and it looked like he was about to start arguing with Tony, he quickly thought up a compromise. “How about after leave the office we can spend time together and do whatever you want?” Tony asked 

Peter looked weary at the thought of that, he was used to doing whatever he wanted whenever he wanted but nobody had ever offered to spend time with him let alone let him choose what they did. 

“Anything I want?” Peter repeated looking at Tony trying to call his bluff. 

“Anything you want, within reason” Tony quickly added, he was more than happy to spend time with his kid but he wasn’t going to let Peter choose crazy things like go to Disneyland or something. 

Peter looked at Tony for a few more seconds trying to see if he was lying or not, when he didn’t see any sign that the man was lying he slowly moved to get off the bed and find something to wear.

Tony mentally celebrated that he finally got the boy out of bed without a tantrum, later on he would think about the hell he was going to have to go through to get the boy to school every morning. 

While Peter picked out his outfit Tony went back downstairs. It was a good thing he had got himself ready before going to wake Peter up and it also was a good thing that he was his own boss and Pepper didn’t actually need him for anything important today. 

Three years back Tony had officially taken a complete step back away from running Stark Industries and instead worked on the technology aspect of the company rather than the actual business part. He never actually like that part to begin with and he was lucky to have Pepper Potts for that. At first he and Pepper took care of it but now he had a lot more free time on his hands other than important meetings about his plans for SI. Looking back on it Tony realized it really was a good idea to take a step back because now he had Peter and he was determined to be a complete hands on dad. 

Tony walked into the kitchen to see what he had that he could attempt to feed Peter, last night after the spaghetti fiasco he had gotten the boy to eat a few spoonfuls of cereal but he had yet to see the boy finish anything. He planned on making the kid a doctors appointment soon considering the boy was already extremely small for his age as is and really couldn’t afford to not eat. 

A few minutes later Peter walked down the stairs and Tony would have been happy about that if the kid was actually dressed. Tony looked Peter up and down noticed the kid had on a black short sleeve t shirt that had characters on it that spelled out the words “Game Face” along with a blue zip hoodie which was fine. What wasn’t fine were the dark blue cargo shorts the boy sported. It wasn’t even 40 degrees outside and there was promise of snow later on tonight, yet the kid had on shorts.

“Peter go upstairs and put some pants on” Tony told the boy. Just when he thought he had won the battle. 

“I’m wearing pants” Peter paused confused as to what Tony was talking about. 

“You’re wearing shorts and it’s— Fri, what’s the weather” Tony paused mid sentence trying to make a point. 

“It is currently sunny out with the temperature being 34 degrees with promise of snow around 10pm tonight” Friday elaborated

“You hear that Peter? It’s 34 degrees outside, way too cold for shorts.” Tony said 

“I wear shorts all the time” Peter insisted. Which was true the boy barely had clothes as it so he went out plenty of times in shorts, nobody cared before. So what was Tony’s deal? 

“Peter, it’s freezing outside” Tony continued “Do you know how dangerous it is to wear shorts in this weather? He asked “You will get sick” 

Peter shrugged his shoulders walking further into the kitchen “Well I don’t have any other clothes” He said. 

“You don’t have anything else to where” Tony asked 

“Nope” 

Instead of questioning the boy any further Tony walked past Peter heading up to the boys room. “Where are you going” Peter asked once Tony passed him. Instead of answering the boy Tony just continued to the stairs leaving the boy to follow him. 

Tony made his way back into the boys room and bent down to reach for his suitcase. He unzipped the suitcase to see what else the boy had that he could put on. To Tony’s surprised Peter actually didn’t have any more clothes only a few pairs of underwear and socks, the rest of his clothes were his dirty clothes sprawled across the floor.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked walking into the room 

“Peter why didn’t you tell me you were out of clean clothes, I would have taken care of it” Tony asked him. 

Instead of answering Peter just shrugged his shoulders. “Alright well uh” Tony began as he looked at the clothes on the floor trying to find something that the boy wore for maybe a few hours so it wasn’t really dirty. 

He found a pair of blue sweatpants the boy had “Put these on” he told Peter as he held them out for Peter to grab. 

“Those are dirty” Peter said crossing his arms. 

“You’ve barely worn them and its just for a few hours” Tony assured him “We’ll get you some more clothes later today” Tony said

Tony didn’t realize how little clothes the boy had, he had a couple pairs of trackpants and about 3 pairs of shorts, he had a few t shirts but the boy didn’t have any outfits. He didn’t even have a single pair of jeans. 

Peter looked at Tony as he still held out the blue sweatpants for him to grab. “Peter” Tony warned. Peter continued to look at Tony after about a minute the boy got bored and decided that he did want to leave the house so he grabbed the pants out of Tony’s hand. 

At this point Tony was used to seeing Peter walk around the house in his underwear so he wasn’t surprised that the boy didn’t wait for him to leave the room before stripping down to put the pants on. 

At this point Tony was more than ready to get out the door and didn’t want Peter throwing another fit over another simple thing like eating breakfast, so he decided they would just find something to eat while they were out. 

When they made there way downstairs Peter started to put on his scuffed up old New Balances shoving the laces in the shoes, Tony couldn’t help but notice how scuffed up the shoes look. He even saw a few holes in them. 

“Are those the only shoes you have” Tony asked Peter

“Yeah” Peter said as he got back up 

Tony stood there for minute and couldn’t believe the Parkers couldn’t even take the time to get Peter appropriate clothing and shoes for the cold winter, but at this point he didn’t think anything could surprise him.

“Yeah, were definitely getting you some clothes today” Tony said to the boy after he handed him his giant coat since he still had to get Peter his own coat. 

Tony and Peter made it to Stark Industries half past 10, there wasn’t any more traffic than usual as they drove there. 

“Good morning Mr.Stark” The lady at the front desk said as Tony walked in to the giant tower with Peter trailing behind him. 

The blonde woman noticed Peter and gave him a long glance but knew it was above her pay grade to question who the little boy was. Tony gave a small wave as he made his way to his private elevator. 

Peter trailed slowly behind him taking in the giant tower, he didn’t think he had even been in such a huge building. His school wasn’t even this big. 

Once they were on Tony’s floor he lead the boy into his office. Peter couldn’t help but gravitate towards the giant windows that showed an awesome view of New York, he could see everything! 

While Peter was looking around Tony was getting situated and turning on his computer and everything. “How long are we going to be here” Peter turned towards Tony 

“Just a few hours” To Peter that felt like a looong time.

It only took about another 30 seconds before Peter got bored of looking at New York and he made his way over to Tony’s desk and sat down in the spinning chair immediately spinning around in it. 

Tony watched amused as Peter kept spinning before he was interrupted by Friday notifying him that Pepper knew he was here and wanted to talk to him. Tony knew it wasn’t about anything important but because it had been a couple of weeks since him and Pep saw each other especially with the life changes Tony was going through. 

“Hey Petey, lets go upstairs real quick there’s someone I want you to meet” Tony said trying to get Peter attention. Peter stopped the chair from spinning before jumping up to make his way to Tony. He of course got dizzy from all the spinning and knocked into Tony, Tony reached his hands out to steady the small boy. 

“You ok?” 

“Yeah” Peter giggled as he made his way out the door before realizing he had no idea where he was going and waited for Tony to lead the way. 

Once they were in the elevator Peter asked “Where we going?” Tony then realized that even though Pepper knew about Peter, Peter didn’t know about Pepper.

“We are going to see a really good friend of mine” He told Peter just as the elevator door opened onto the next floor. 

This used to be Tony’s floor since it had the biggest office but when he put Pepper in charge she negotiated that she deserved the biggest office since she was taking over as CEO and Tony honestly didn’t care where his office was so he gave it to her. 

They walked into Pepper’s office as soon as she was getting off a phone call, when she saw Tony walk in she moved to stand up. 

“Hello Tony” Pepper said with a grin 

“Hello, Ms.Potts” Tony greeted back 

Pepper immediately look at the little boy trailing behind Tony. Just one look at the boy and she could tell that Peter was definitely Tony’s kid, the resemblance was uncanny. She also noticed how tiny the boy was, off bat she wouldn’t have assumed this boy had just turned eleven he looked closer to a just turned 7 year old. 

Pepper leaned down in front of Peter once the boy was close enough “and who might you be?” she asked Peter trying to spark up a conversation considering she knew exactly who he was. 

“Hi, I’m Peter” Peter said with a toothy grin showing off his adorable gap teeth as he swayed a little. 

Pepper couldn’t help but mentally coo at how adorable the little boy was and laugh how he literally looked just like the pictures she had seen of Tony as a kid, all the way down to the big gap between his two front teeth. 

Pepper smiled warmly at the little boy “Well it is very nice to meet you Peter, I’m Pepper”

Peter scrunched his nose up and tilted his head to the side “Is that your real name?” 

Tony couldn’t help but laugh at his kids question, Pepper laughed too and Peter felt even more confused because who named their kid Pepper? He had heard some weird names before he even had a friend at school named Lucky Blue, but nothing as weird as Pepper. 

“No, honey its just a nickname” Pepper clarified still laughing a little at the face expression the boy had made. 

“Oh, ok” Peter said after a second still confused as to what kind of nickname that was. 

“So, how do you know my dad?” Peter asked changing the subject, Tony couldn’t help the way his heart skipped a beat at the way Peter called him his dad. It was so surreal being a dad and even though Peter had called him dad to his face yet it was still so crazy. Not a bad crazy but a new crazy if that made since. 

“Um, well a long time ago your dad hired me to be his assistant” 

“What’s an assistant?” Peter asked 

“Well an assistance is someone who does any and everything their boss asks them to” 

“Isn’t that a maid?” 

“Uh well no, a maid is different a maid cleans up after people, although technically I have had to clean up after your father at times” Pepper joked 

“Ha Ha” Tony said sarcastically “You’re so funny Pep” 

“Well, I try” Pepper joked making Peter laugh. 

They stayed in Pepper’s office for about 10 more minutes before Pepper had to answer more calls so they went back to Tony’s floor. 

Peter got bored pretty much instantly, and although Tony didn’t have any actual work to do today he still had to read and respond to emails and sign a few papers that Pepper left on his desk. 

Tony handed Peter his StarkPad, this one bigger than the one at home it was about the size of a laptop screen minus the keypad maybe a little bigger. 

Peter played different games on it for almost an hour before getting bored and started to annoy Tony. He fidgeted with the stuff on Tony’s desk and at first Tony was ok with it until he started messing with the papers Tony was attempting to skim over. 

“Hey, hey Peter stop” Tony warned him 

“When are we leaving” Peter asked again “I’m ready to go” 

“As soon as I finish reading through these papers.” Peter gave Tony another minute before grabbing the stack of papers Tony hadn’t got to yet and threw them on the floor causing papers to spread everywhere before crossing his hands across his chest and looking at Tony. “I’m ready to go”

Tony looked at Peter annoyed trying hard not to yell at Peter. Peter continued to look at Tony trying to see what he was going to do. 

After a minute of looking at the boy Tony got out of his desk chair to pick up all the papers and put them back on the desk. He clearly wasn’t going to get through these today, they hadn’t even been here for 2 hours and the boy was misbehaving.  
“Alright, well did you decide what you wanted to do today, remember we have to go get you some clothes.” 

Peter thought for a second “Well then let’s do that” Peter didn’t really like going shopping especially since he was usually in charge of getting his own clothes so he would just anything that fit. That was the real reason Peter didn’t actually have any clothes since he was only eleven he didn’t know you had to buy clothes that you could wear no matter how hot or cold it is outside. But in his head anything sounded more interesting than being alone in a room with Tony any longer. 

To go shopping Tony was going to have to have Happy take them considering the man was his bodyguard and he didn’t like being in big crowds where anything could happen without safety. One of the cons of being a billionaire, it felt like at any given time someone was ready to rob or hurt you. Of course having the bodyguard there might be good thing for Peter since he seemed to like spending time with the man. 

Tony had Happy drive them to Fifth Avenue in midtown. Tony rarely went shopping nowadays and instead usually got high end designer clothes sent to him. So this was definitely going to take awhile especially since he had to figure out Peters clothing size.

Tony decided that they should start off at Saks and make there way to other stores. The store was packed with tons of people of course because rich people had nothing better to do than shop but luckily Happy did an excellent job at making sure no one got in there way and had a few more bodyguards on standby outside the store if need be. 

They had to do some walking before making it to the kids section which was a completely unfamiliar section for Tony and he honestly didn’t know where to start. 

“Alright, well do you see anything you like” Tony looked at Peter

Peter shrugged, this was unfamiliar to him as well he was used to just picking stuff up at Walmart that fit like sweatpants and t-shirts every now and then with the money his parents left him. He had never really payed attention to what he was picking up other than certain t-shirts with designs he liked. 

They stood there for a minute before Peter noticed a pair of sweatpants he liked. They were a pair of dark blue Aviator Nation sweatpants with red, yellow, and orange stripes pattering the left bottom pant leg. He walked over to the sweatpants and picked them up not even looking to see if they were his size. 

“You like these?” Tony asked once the boy picked them up. “Yeah” Peter nodded before moving on.

“Hold on, we need to see if that’s your size” Tony grabbed the pants out of the boys and looked at the tag. They of course were too big for the boy considering they were a size 12 which may have fit the average eleven year old but Peter wasn’t average. Tony looked through the other sizes before picking up a size 8 and a size 10. 

Peter had moved on to the same sweatpants in different colors, Tony quickly had to switch out the ones Peter picked to his size as the boy kept moving. Peter had picked out a few Aviator Nation tees as well before telling Tony he was done. 

“Ok, we can go now” Peter headed towards the door. Tony looked at Peter incredulously because the kid picked out a few sweatpants and a few matching tees but he still needed a ton more clothes. 

“Uh kid we just got here you’ve barely picked anything out plus we have to try this stuff on”. Peter threw his head back and let out a noice of annoyance. He had already picked out more clothes than he ever got at one time and now Tony was saying they still weren’t finished. 

“What else do you see that you like?” Peter shrugged at the question. Tony seeing that Peter wasn’t going to be any help started grabbing random clothing items to get the boys opinion. 

“What about this?” He held out a shirt. Peter gave no response so Tony just found his size and added it to pile. He continued to attempt to ask Peters opinion a few more times before giving up and picking out stuff on his own for the boy to try on. Soon he had enough clothes for Peter and moved on to jackets, Peter would probably need a ton of zip up hoodies and a few heavy coats. 

He lead Peter to the dressing room so Peter could try the clothes on. “Do you want me to go in with you or you got it?” Tony asked 

“I got it” Peter went into the dressing room closing the door behind him after Tony sit all the clothes down for Peter to try on. 

After a few minutes Peter tried on the sweatpants before confirming that they fit. “They fit” he started to slide the sweatpants back off. “Ok, let me see” Tony said he needed to make sure they actually fit. 

“What? Why?” Peter whined. “So I can make sure they fit” Tony said. Peter dragged himself to the door before opening it and standing in the door way. Off bat Tony could tell that the sweatpants were too big. “Which size are those?” Peter shrugged at the question and Tony beckoned him over. 

Peter walked over to Tony and Tony pulled the back of sweatpants to see the tag, they of course were the size 10 because they were huge on the tiny boy. “Those are too big, try on the other ones”.  
Peter whined at the thought of having to try on more clothes but little did he know this was just the beginning. This went on a few more times before Tony had a pretty good idea of Peters clothing sizes so luckily the boy wouldn’t have to try on anymore clothes but he still had more clothes to get. 

Tony paid for the tons of clothes the boy got and of course was recognized by the cashier. When she saw Peter she looked at him for a second before Tony sparked up a conversation with her to take her attention off him. 

They went to a few other stores like, Bergdorf Goodman, Zara, H&M, Nike, and Journeys. By the time they were done Peter had a lot more clothes than he had before hell he had more clothes now than most people had. Tony had also gotten him a lot of shoes from sneakers to boots, It definitely was a surprise to Tony to find out how tiny Peters feet were as well. The boy wore a size 2 in shoes. 

While Tony was happy to have gotten it out the way Peter got more and more annoyed at all the different stores they went to. 

It was almost 4 by the time they were done so honestly Tony couldn’t blame the boy for losing his patience but it was still annoying when you’re trying to get something done and your kid fights you the whole way. 

It wasn’t until Happy pointing it out that Tony realized he had yet to feed the kid today. Peter didn’t say anything about being hungry but Tony still felt guilty, it was past lunch time and the kid hadn’t had a bite of anything all day and he dragged him around shopping. 

Tony had Friday look for restaurants nearby that had things Peter could eat. Which was how they ended up at a vegan burger spot. Tony didn’t even know those existed but he wasn’t surprised. 

Peter ended up with a vegan chicken wrap and French fries while Tony got a veggie burger and fries. He was a little skeptical over it but it honestly wasn’t half bad. It didn’t taste like meat perse but it was still pretty good. The restaurant itself was pretty nice too there wasn’t a lot of people there and it was a small quaint place. 

“I’m finished” Peter ate all of his fries and ate 2 bites of his wrap. He was now drinking his kid sized lemonade. “Take one more bite of your wrap” Tony said as he finished his burger. Peter shrugged before taking a last bite. 

After eating they had to make one more stop. While Tony got most of Peter’s clothes out the way the boy still needed other necessities like underwear and socks but those were things you could find at any store, which was how they got to Target. 

In Target Tony took the boy to the kids section to pick out socks and underwear. “What size underwear do you wear?” Tony asked

Peter blushed at the question “I don’t know” In true boy manner Peter was embarrassed about having to pick out underwear.

“Turn around” Tony told him. Peter did what he said confused. Tony pulled the boys pants and underwear back so he could see what size they were. Peter immediately tried to squirm away embarrassed that Tony was doing this in public. After Tony had the size Peter turned back around gave Tony a look.

Tony just shrugged. Peter picked out a few packs of briefs underwear with the characters he liked on them like Spongebob, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Super Mario, Pokemon, and even more with Tony switching out the sizes as the boy went along. 

They then picked out a few pairs of socks and some long sleeve undershirts for Peter. Another reason Tony had brought Peter here was to pick out a few toys for the boy, but he didn’t tell Peter about it. 

“Come on” Tony grabbed the cart leading Peter to another aisle. They made it to the many toy aisles and Peter was confused. Tony led him over to the aisle with the gaming consoles, he had asked FRIDAY last night what type of toys did kids Peters age usually liked and most kids like gaming consoles like the Playstation and the Nintendo Switch. 

“Which one do you like” Tony said as he stopped on the aisle. Peter had his eye on the red and blue Nintendo switch Mario bundle and pointed at it. “What games do you like?” Tony asked. Peter pointed at one game which was Super Mario party. 

“That’s it? You can pick as many as you want” Tony told him. Peter picked out 2 more games which were Minecraft and Super smash bros. A worker had helped them and Tony put all the stuff in the cart before looking at Peter “Happy Birthday” he said with a smile. 

Peter instantly grinned bouncing on his feet in excitement “Its for me?” The boy asked surprised. Tony was shocked that the boy didn’t realize before that it was all for him since he had asked him which ones he liked. 

After finding out about his gift Peter was definitely in a brighter mood, no one had ever got him something like this and he couldn’t wait to play with it. 

They checked out and Happy loaded everything in the car, Tony couldn’t help but think about how much stuff they were going to have to take in the house. He had spent probably over 2000 dollars on Peter in just one day not that it bothered him he would have spent more. 

By the time Happy had gotten them back home it was a little after 7 with traffic and Tony was surprised to find Peter fast asleep in the back. But then again the boy was pretty quiet during the other car rides Peter would talk Happy’s ear off but about 20 minutes ago the boy had gotten quiet. 

Tony told Happy to start taking everything in and he would get Peter in the house. Happy of course was annoyed that he would have to be the one to take the tons of bags in the house. Tony opened the back car door as Peter was fast asleep in what Tony thought was an uncomfortable position his head was dangled down and off to the side with his curls sprawled all across his face. He reached in and unbuckled Peters seatbelt before leaning back and tried to decide how he was going to do this. On one hand he could wake Peter up and walk him into the house but if this morning was anything to go by then that would just make Peter cranky. 

So he was left to pick the boy up, I mean he couldn’t be that heavy Tony thought to himself. Tony didn’t think he had ever held a child before really let alone one Peter’s age, but first time for everything right? 

Tony squatted down before pulling Peter out the car and towards him until he was close enough for Tony to lift up. Tony reached under Peters arm pits and lifted him up while standing up to his full height. He almost accidentally hit Peters head on the car but was able to grab it last minute before resting his arms under the boys butt so Peters legs were wrapped around his waist. Tony couldn’t help but notice how light Peter was, he knew Peter was extremely small but he lifted the boy so easily it felt like he didn’t weigh a thing. 

Peter had stiffened up for a second before relaxing again in Tony’s arms. It was in that moment that Tony realized this was his first time holding his kid, most parents held their kids seconds after they were born and here Tony was eleven years later holding his son for the first time. He couldn’t help but notice how perfectly the boy fit in his arms. Like they were meant to be. This was the first time Tony had held his boy in his entire life and if there was one thing Tony was going to be sure of was that it wasn’t going to the last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and again I am always open to any ideas or tips on how to better my story. Unfortunately these slow updates will become a new thing since my classes have started back up and I need to focus on those but I will try to update once a month at least.


	7. The Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I'm so sorry for such a late update I know I said I would try to update once a month at least but last month got away from me with school work and everything so I didn't have the time. I will continue to try to update once a month but can't make any promises. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter and again I am always looking for tips and am open to listening to anything you guys want to see happen in this story.

Peter lay sleeping in Tony arms with his legs loosely against his sides with his head on Tony’s chest, if it wasn’t for Tony having one of his hands cupping the back of the boys head carefully against his chest his head would have rolled all over the place. Tony carefully carried Peter into the house walking softly to avoid the boy waking up. As he walked into the house Happy was walking back out to grab more stuff out the car. They both looked at each other for a second before Happy moved out the way so Tony could get Peter in the house. 

Tony walked into the house and headed toward the stairs, he walked more carefully up the stairs than he ever remembered doing in his entire life. He made it to Peters bedroom and struggled to open the door for a second since his hands were full but he got it after a few seconds. Once Tony was standing on the side of the bed he situated Peter so he was cradling him like a newborn with Peters head laying kind of on his left arm but still on his chest so he could lean down and lay him on the bed. Tony gently lowered Peter on the bed and slowly moved his arm that was cradling the boys head once it was on a pillow to not disturb him. He made quick work of removing the boys shoes and socks luckily Peter had taken off his new puffer jacket the second they got back in the car leaving him in a thin blue hoodie, he then carefully pulled the boys blue sweatpants off knowing that Peter hated clothes. It was rare Peter even wore clothes when they were home let alone to sleep. He didn’t even think about taking off the hoodie deciding that it wasn’t worth the risk of waking Peter up.

Once Tony pulled the covers over the boy he couldn’t help but notice how small Peter looked, don’t get him wrong Peter always looked small but sleeping he looked like an adorable baby. Tony couldn’t help the groan he let out as he kneeled beside Peters bed, he honestly felt like he’d been walking around all day and he honestly had, one thing he was thankful for though was no one had truly recognized him in public and Happy was able to help him get the privacy he needed with Peter while they were out. It was rare nowadays for Tony to get noticed anyway considering he wasn’t in the media as much anymore as he had been in his younger playboy days. He was still pretty well known don’t get him wrong he does own the wealthiest company in the world but as the years went by he was less and less. 

Tony couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and softly brushing Peters wild chocolate unruly curls out of his face as he slept. The boys curly hair was so soft like what you would find on a newborn baby’s head. Peter looked so angelic when he was asleep, it was hard to imagine him as the same kid that threw a bowl of spaghetti all over the floor yesterday, fought Tony on getting out of bed this morning, or threw Tony’s important documents on the floor when told to be patient. 

Tony kneeled down on the carpet in front of the bed and just looked at the sleeping boy, his hand inching closer to him. He couldn’t get over how adorable and sweet Peter looked in his sleep, almost as if the boys guard fell when he was sleep. Every moment that Peter was awake always felt like the boy did whatever he could to put a wall between him and Tony, the kid fought him on every little thing and did whatever he could to keep away from Tony. They could spend the entire day in the same house and it honestly felt like Peter never talked to him, he never asked for anything or started conversations with him. He’d just go off and watch tv on the couch and when that got boring Tony would see Peter moving around the house and making habits of looking out the windows. 

But now in this moment Peters guard was down and he looked like sweet little boy who didn’t feel like he always had to be in charge. Tony spent a few more minutes taking in the boy in his peaceful state, not knowing the next time he’d see the boy like this. After a few minutes Tony got up and headed back downstairs but not before pressing a kiss to Peters forehead. 

Peter ended up staying asleep the whole night which surprised Tony considering he fell asleep around 7 but he figured after not doing anything for that past week and then spending hours out shopping would do that to a kid. At first he was tempted to wake Peter up for dinner but decided against it when he thought about how Peter probably wouldn’t eat to began with. He knew he would have to take Peter to a doctor soon to figure out the best way to help his kid and the best way to start was to get all the information about Peters health starting with how much he weighed, plus he needed to stock up on EpiPens for the kid. They hadn’t had any problems yet but it was best to be prepared for anything.

It definitely worried Tony when he picked clothes out for Peter and saw how small the child truly was. Peter could fit into size 7/small clothing. A size that was meant to fit children around the ages of 7/8 years old. Peter was eleven he shouldn’t be anywhere near that tiny. So Tony was going to make an appointment with the Urgent care facility Peter had went to a few times before he was in Tony’s care. Tony knew he would have to find Peter an actual pediatrician and fast on top of all the other millions of things he’d have to do but he first wanted to get all of Peters history and medical files that the Parkers may have left out so the best way to do that was starting somewhere Peter was familiar with and in turn where they were hopefully familiar with him. 

While Peter slept Tony washed all of the new clothes he’d gotten Peter in the new laundry detergent he’d picked up just for Peter, it apparently was #1 Dermatologist Recommended for sensitive skin which was something Tony never cared about before but when you have a kid that’s allergic to everything under the sun you start to care about those things. 

While Tony washed clothes he drifted and thought about the day they had overall it was a pretty good day, Tony had finally got to introduce Peter to Pepper. Pepper was one of Tony’s closest friends she was more like family if anything. Pepper, Happy and Rhodey were probably the people that Tony felt he was actually close to, everyone else it seemed only wanted Tony for his money fame or power. Which was why Tony never let people know the real him. It took a long time for Tony to let his closest friends in and trust them enough to not use him. But after years of being his assistant he and Pepper grew close and he slowly opened up more and more and eventually they started dating. The relationship didn’t last long even though it was the longest relationship Tony had ever been in (years and years of one night stands) in the end they both wanted different things and decided they were better off as friends. It didn’t change their relationship or make anything awkward for them even when Pepper started dating other people. 

So Tony was really happy to see Peter and Pepper interact with each other. Peter seemed to like Pepper when they met but then again Tony had yet to see Peter not like anyone except him. Anytime they were out in public Peter always seemed to be on his best behavior other than not having any patience but that was every child when you made them do something they didn’t want to. Peter was always friendly with everyone and complemented them, asked them questions without fail. Usually he was always the first one to spark up conversations with strangers. 

Overall Tony couldn’t complain about the whole day entirely other than the times when Peter didn’t get his way. Plus Tony felt better knowing that Peter had clothes that could last him through the winter now. If he was being honest the kid probably got more clothes today than most people had in their entire closet.

It took Tony a few hours to wash the clothes having so many loads to go through and before he knew it, it was midnight. While washing clothes Tony had looked at a few emails Pepper had sent him as well as scanned over the signed documents that Peter threw on the floor earlier that day. He heated himself up a bowl of leftover spaghetti for dinner. After finishing everything up, Tony threw the last load of clothes in the dryer before heading upstairs.

He crept up the stairs as quietly as possible considering the stairs were wooded it wasn’t surprising for them to creak every now and then. He passed his bedroom and slowly opened Peters door to check in on him.

Peter had clearly changed positions a few times in his sleep because the covers that were once tucked on top of him were halfway sprawled across the floor covering only one of Peters legs and leaving the rest of his body uncovered. Peter was spread out like a starfish on his stomach with his face turned away from the door showing his wild long curls all over the pillow, his arms were folded under his pillow. 

Tony quietly tiptoed in the room and pulled the blanket off the floor gently laying it back on the boy, he didn’t want Peter to get cold. Walking back out the room Tony spared a glance before softly closing the door back.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------- 

Despite having a full day yesterday and staying up past midnight Tony ended up waking up pretty early. If he was being honest he’d been waking up earlier than usual since Peter had been with him. He even found himself waking up for a few minutes every couple of hours or so which was really weird. Tony was a really light sleeper don’t get him wrong but this was something different, it was like clockwork he’d wake up check the time and lay there for a few minutes willing himself to go back to sleep. 

So Tony woke up at 8:18am and lied in bed for about 15 minutes before getting up. He got out of bed and let out a groan, as he stretched his bones cracking in the process reminded Tony he wasn’t as young as he used to be. 

He went into his bathroom did his business and all that stuff before going downstairs for a cup of coffee. Walking into the kitchen Tony looked out the window that was near the seating booth he had. He noticed that it had snowed again throughout the night leaving a few more inches on the ground. 

It was pretty quiet of course considering Tony lived in such a secluded area but on top of that it was also quiet since it was still early so Tony didn’t hear anything really other than the birds chirping outside. 

“Morning FRI” Tony greeted the AI

“Good morning boss” FRIDAY greeted back as she turned on the coffee maker and started to fix Tony’s coffee the temperature he liked it. 

Tony grabbed the cup of coffee and walked toward the window to look at the beautiful scenery. One thing he really loved when he bought the land to build the house was how serene and beautiful it was, it really was beautiful outside especially with the giant lake on the property that was now frozen over due to the cold New York weather. He had a lot of land on the property which he honestly didn’t do anything with, the home the land was on itself was around 50 acres and Tony owned all the land around the which was around 2000 acres leaving his home completely secluded from anyone else.  
When he first bought the property he planned on making it another vacation house or somewhere he could go when everything got to be too much for him with the company or the media, or even just life itself but when he stepped down he decided to stay here full time. It wasn’t too far away from everything where he felt completely out the loop but just enough to where he was away from the city but could get back to it quickly when he needed to. He never regretted his decision to move out here but at times he did feel lonely be out here all by himself but hopefully all that would change now that he had Peter. 

Tony took in the serene quiet for a few minutes while he drank his coffee, before making his way into his home office and looking through his emails and responding to some of them. 

Peter woke up about an hour later at around 9:30am and let out a big stretch before getting out of bed. He couldn’t remember when he fell asleep yesterday, he did remember the long day he had yesterday though. He sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes before he got bored and decided to go explore downstairs, especially since he now had something to play with. 

He didn’t bother putting on any clothes and instead opted to stay in the blue jacket he slept in along with his Lego Star Wars briefs. Once he was downstairs he didn’t bother looking for his dad and instead made a beeline to where Happy had dropped put all the shopping bags. He was a little surprised to find all the shopping bags except the one with the Nintendo Switch gone but didn’t bother thinking about that. 

Luckily they had set the switch up in the store when the cashier mentioned to Tony that he would want to get a case for it as well as a screen protector and a SD card that gave it more storage so all Peter had to do was turn it on and pop in one of the new games he got. 

Peter made himself comfortable sprawled on the couch like he always did and played Super Smash Bros, he got so wrapped up in the game that he didn’t hear Tony come out of his office 10 minutes later. 

“Good Morning” Tony greeted Peter as he walked into the living room. He got no response from the boy as he worked on beating Kirby in the game. “What do you want for breakfast?” Tony continued still getting no response.

After a second of the boy ignoring him Tony walked closer to the boy, maybe getting him the game was a bad idea Tony thought to himself. Tony put his hand in front of the switch making Peter try to flip over so he could continue playing. Tony didn’t allow that and instead took the switch out of Peter hands. 

“Hey!” Peter cried as he reached up and tried to grab it back from Tony but the man moved it out of his reach. Peter continued trying to take the game back from Tony, going as far as standing up on the couch and leaning over to try and take it out of Tony’s hands. The boy would’ve flipped over the back of the couch had it not been for Tony holding him up. 

“Peter-“ Tony started once again but was cut off by Peter “you said I could have it, you said it was mine” the boy cried about his beloved new toy still eagerly reaching for it. 

“It is yours but sit down for a minute” The words didn’t do anything to calm the boy as he continued reaching. Losing his patience Tony grabbed Peter by the arm and turned him so he would sit down on the couch.  
“Now, good morning” Tony greeted the child. Peter glared at Tony before forcing out a dull “morning” 

“What do you want for breakfast” Tony asked like he did every morning 

“I don’t know, I’m not hungry” Peter replied still upset that Tony took his switch. 

“Peter you haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, you’ve got to be hungry for something” 

“Nope” 

“Ok” Tony said after a second he looked away for a few seconds before continuing “How about cereal?” 

“Nope”

Since they still had yet to go grocery shopping for foods that Peter could eat Tony really didn’t have all that many breakfast options, so he compromised “How about your leftovers from yesterday?” 

Peter shrugged his shoulders, so Tony took that as a yes. Instead of giving the boy back his game Tony turned around and made his way to the kitchen taking the switch with him. Peter jumped off the couch and followed him like a puppy waiting for a treat. 

Tony sit the switch down since he couldn’t hold it while fixing Peters food. The second Tony sit the switch down Peter immediately snatched it up and scampered off to the breakfast bar chair that he sat in everyday. 

Peter got wrapped back up in playing Super Smash Bros leaving Tony time to think while the boys food heated up. He still had so much stuff to do, it felt like he had a never ending list of things he needed to do now that Peter was here. On the top of his list he needed to get the kid to the doctor, and then he needed to meet up with his lawyers so he could sign a bunch of papers that proved Peter to be his son and that he now had complete custody of the boy. He also had to go to Peters school and get his name put on all the paper work along with emergency contacts and meeting teachers, speaking of school when did school start back for the boy? Tony had been so wrapped up in everything else he didn’t even think about Peters school, he didn’t even know where the boy went to school or how it would all work out now that Peter didn’t technically live in the city anymore. 

Tony was pulled from his thoughts by the beeping of the microwave and pulled Peters food out. Tony sit the plate in front of Peter, but the boy paid him no mind still too wrapped up in beating up Pikachu in the game. Tony stood in front of Peter for a second before deciding to fix himself another cup of coffee. 

“After you finish whatever that is, you need to take a break and eat” Tony told him. 

“Peter”

“Uh huh” Peter replied back not really listening to Tony. 

Peter finished the level before taking a bite of his food, he took a couple more bites before hopping off the stool with his switch and made his way back into the living room, telling FRIDAY to turn the tv on. 

While Peter played on his switch and watched tv, Tony decided to get in touch with his lawyers. Having the best lawyers in the country was amazing because they were always at his beck and call so all he had to do was schedule to drop off the papers and evidence that Peters guardians had abandoned him along with the DNA test he had Helen Cho perform and sign a few papers and that would be all. Peter Parker would officially become Peter Stark, of course later on Tony would have to rewrite his will and all that boring stuff but that stuff could wait.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------- 

The next morning Tony was able to schedule Peter a doctors appointment since it wasn’t technically a real doctors office and actually a minute clinic type of place he was able to schedule Peters appointment for the same day at 2:30pm. 

Since it was still only 9:15am Tony still had awhile before he had to get himself and Peter ready. Peter had yet to come downstairs yet so Tony didn’t even know if the boy was awake yet. 

It wasn’t until 11 that the boy finally came downstairs and did his daily routine of looking out the window for a few minutes before sitting on the couch and watching his favorite show while playing on his Nintendo Switch. Tony yet again asked Peter what he wanted to eat and Peter once again ignored him until Tony dragged him into the kitchen. He hoped that today would be the last day of that or at least maybe after the doctors appointment Tony could understand more of the foods that Peter needed to eat because the kid was definitely malnourished. 

As Tony sit a bowl of cereal in front of the boy which he was sure Peter was tired of at this point since it was the only breakfast food Tony had to feed him so far, Tony decided to mention the doctors appointment to Peter. 

“So I scheduled you a doctors appointment for later today” 

Peter continued fiddling with his cereal for a second, not really eating it before replying “a doctors appointment? But I’m not sick”. 

“I know you’re not sick, it’s just a checkup so we can make sure everything is alright with you” Tony left out the obvious fact that Peter was extremely malnourished and he needed to see just how off Peters weight and height percentile was off from other kids his age and what he could do to change that. Tony had looked up the average weight for a child Peters age and although he didn’t physically weigh the kid he could definitely tell Peter was way off. 

Peter looked up at Tony confused “Well you can only go to the doctor if you’re sick or hurt”

Tony looked at Peter for a second while the boy continued playing with his cereal “you’ve never gone to a check up before, so the doctor can check you out or give you your shots?” Tony asked

Peter shrugged his shoulders before replying “no I only go when I’m sick or when I break something, so I don’t have to go to any doctors” 

Tony looked at Peter and could already tell that what he was going to say next was going to lead to a fight “You have to go today so the doctor can check you and make sure you’re healthy and see if there’s any reason you’re not eating”  
Peter pushed the cereal bowl away before jumping out of the chair “Well I’m not going” before grabbing his Nintendo switch and running upstairs to his room. Peter hated going to the doctor especially after the last time when the nurse was so mean to him, he didn’t even like thinking about that time and what they did to him. Peter locked his bedroom door behind him before jumping in bed and pulling the covers over his head leaving a small hole for him to breathe through and played Mario Kart. 

Tony decided to leave Peter to his own devices considering the kid didn’t like him that much as is, most of the time it felt like Tony was talking to himself when it was just him and Peter but when there was more people around like Happy or Pepper it felt like Peter fit right in and always gravitated towards them. 

Before long it was time for Tony to get Peter ready since he didn’t want to be running late or anything. He made his way upstairs to the boys room to tell him it was time to get dressed. Tony knocked on Peters door before turning the knob to let himself into Peters room. Imagine his surprise when he finds the door locked.

“Peter, its time to get ready” Tony started, when he didn’t get a response he tried again “Peter come on, get up your appointment is in 30 minutes.” 

“I’m not going” Peter yelled from under the covers” 

“Peter open the door now” 

“Peter” Tony said sternly while jiggling the doorknob

“NO!” Peter screamed 

Tony gave a deep breath completely annoyed with his kid and could already see where this day was going. Tony turned around going downstairs and getting his tools. The man was a mechanic so he of course had any tool you could think of but all he needed was a screwdriver to loosen Peters doorknob. 

Going back upstairs Tony immediately made work of loosening the doorknob and had it unconnected in 30 seconds flat. Since the doorknob was now loose and disconnected it no longer made the door close all the way so you would hear a click sound let alone lock. 

Pushing the door open Tony marched into Peters room before pulling the covers off the boy. “Give me that” He said taking the switch out of Peters hand, instead of the boy fighting him like he thought he would Peter just let Tony take it out of his hands not even holding on tight to it he just let it go. 

“whatever you can keep it, I don’t want the stupid game anyway” Peter said before turning over and pulling the covers back over his head. 

Tony planned on giving it back to the boy once he got dressed and was out the door, but he wasn’t going to tell Peter that since he honestly needed the boy to listen to him and not just because he would get his game back. 

“Look Peter the quicker we leave the quicker we can get back, so just get dressed so we can go” Tony told him as he once again pulled the covers off the boy. 

“I’m not going” Peter repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. 

Tony ignored Peter and instead made of work of picking the boy out an outfit, he grabbed a pair of dark blue Aviator Nation sweatpants with a jacket that matched that had sunset stripes pattering down the sides of the pants and the front of the hoodie and a simple white t shirt. He laid the clothes on the bed and pulled the covers off the boy and grabbed Peters arms to pull him out the bed. He didn’t do it harshly but Peter still flinched at the physical contact. 

Peter thrashed around out of Tony’s hold before kicking his foot out and kicking Tony hard against his leg. Tony was more so shocked at the kick itself than the pain he felt from it but it did really hurt. He let go of Peter who then ran out of the room and towards the stairs. 

Peter had gone downstairs into the kitchen and hid under the table. He wasn’t scared of Tony or anything, honestly he didn’t care too much for the man he just wanted Tony to leave him alone like everyone else did. Peter didn’t know anyone who ever made Peter do things like Tony did most people would just ask him to do something and when he said no or threw a fit they’d leave him alone to do whatever he wanted. Including his parents not that they ever cared what he was doing anyway. 

Tony had sat on the bed holding his leg in pain for a few minutes before making his way downstairs, he checked every nook and cranny looking for the boy on top of looking in obvious places like the couch. When he didn’t see the boy anywhere he got mildly worried that Peter may have went outside but knew that the alarm would’ve been triggered the second Peter opened the door. 

“Peter” Tony called out for what felt like the millionth time that day as he looked for his kid. 

Peter made no move to leave his hiding spot and acted like he didn’t hear Tony. 

Tony let out a sigh as he made his way into the kitchen needing a cup of coffee, while he was fixing his cup of coffee he heard a small sneeze. At first Tony thought he was imagining it but then he saw movement underneath the dining table, he squinted at the table for a second before moving toward Peters hiding spot. 

Tony waked over to the table before bending down so he and Peter were eye to eye. “Found you” Tony said an amused undertone in his voice.

Peter rolled his eyes had he moved to get from under the table “I wasn’t hiding” 

They stayed in silence for a few minutes the only sound being the coffee maker behind them. Peter sat down in the booth and Tony followed suit. Peter paid Tony no mind and instead looked outside the window at the pretty white snow and the frozen over lake. Tony looked at Peter wondering what was going through the boys head, he always wondered what was going through Peters. Peter always looked like he had so much to say and yet he barely ever said anything to Tony. 

“Hey, so why don’t you tell me why you’re so against going to the doctor” Tony asked Peter looking at him.

Peter shrugged for a second curling in on himself as he continued looking out the window. “Because I’m not sick” 

“Yeah I know you’re not sick buddy, its just so we can check you out and make sure everything’s fine” Tony repeated what he told Peter earlier.

“But they’re gonna stab me like they did last time” Peter said 

“Stab you?” Tony asked his voice going up a little because what kind of doctor was stabbing people? 

“Uh huh, last time I went the lady stabbed me and took my blood and even though I was crying she didn’t even care and then she left me and I was all alone” Peter opened up.

Well that made sense on why Peter was refused to go to the doctor, not that anyone liked going to the doctor anyway but a traumatic experience like that would definitely make Tony never step foot in a doctors office again. 

“That definitely sounds really scary Petey and it shouldn’t have happened but I promise no one is going to stab with needles or anything like that this time plus I’m gonna be there the entire time.” Tony told him not knowing anything else he could say to make It better.

Peter still looked skeptical as if he didn’t believe Tony “How do you know?” he asked the man. It wasn’t like Tony knew what they were going to do at the appointment. 

“Because the second they say anything about shots or anything like that we’ll leave” Tony said hoping this would get Peter out the door, he meant every word he said though.

Peter looked at Tony again as if trying to read him. Tony held his hands up before continuing “I promise” He said 

When Peter still made no move of getting up Tony added “Look how about after the doctors we get you something, what do you want? Candy? Donuts? Cookies? Whatever you want” Tony knew bribing your kid is the worst way to parenting but he honestly didn’t know what else to do. 

That got the boy standing up, no kid could resist the promise of sweets.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------- 

They had finally made it to the doctors office after what felt like tons of coaxing to Tony. As they walked closer and closer to the door the more anxious Peter felt, the boy couldn’t stop replaying the last time he came here in his head. It was a couple more steps before Peter decided he wasn’t going. 

“I’m not going in there” Peter declared as he turned around.

“What? Peter were already its just going to be a few minutes” Tony said as he grabbed Peters arm

The movement caused the boy to wrench himself out of Tony’s hold before breaking out into a run toward the street that was filled with moving cars. Tony felt his heart stop as he shouted for Peter to stop and moved to grab him again. He luckily was able to grab the boy by the back of his jacket a second before Peter could step foot into the street. 

Peter let out a cry as he thrashed in Tony’s hold trying to get away from him not even noticing he was literally a second a way from getting hit by a car. That was nothing new for Peter the kid never looked where he was going and never thought before doing dangerous things like that. 

“Hey!” Tony said sternly to Peter trying to get the boys attention while holding him so he was looking at him with both hands holding onto the boys arms. Tony didn’t pay any attention to the people walking by them that were looking at them. 

“Peter, you don’t do that, you could’ve gotten hit by a car” Tony tried telling Peter how dangerous that was

“I don’t care, I’m ready to go” All Peter could think about was he didn’t want to go to the doctor

Tony grabbed Peters hand, he now knew to never let the boys had go when they were in public and dragged him towards the building. Peter continued to thrash along the way yelling how he hated Tony and how he wasn’t going in there. 

Tony did his best to ignore the judging looks of people that they passed as he took Peter into the doctors office before going to the front desk to sign the boy in, still holding on to Peter so the boy didn’t try to make a run for it again. 

He got Peter signed in before lifting Peter up and walking him toward the seating area, there luckily wasn’t many people there. He sat Peter down in a chair before squatting down in front of the boy. 

“Hey, look at me” Tony said softly this time putting his hand on both sides of Peters chair. He couldn’t help but notice the way Peters eyes looked wet like he was about to cry. He felt somewhat bad for dragging Peter to the doctor seeing how scared Peter looked. He realized this was the first time he’s ever seen Peter about to cry, the boy didn’t even cry when he was literally abandoned on his doorstep. But he knew this doctors appointment had to be done.

“I know you’re scared but its gonna go by so fast and then we can get you whatever you want” He told the boy

“I’m not scared” Peter said his soft voice making him sound so adorable. Tony kept his laugh on the inside at that, the boy claimed he wasn’t scared but the kicking and screaming he did leading into the office said otherwise. 

A few seconds later the nurse was calling Peters name and they were heading back. 

“Hello Peter, long time no see” The nurse greeted the boy. When she noticed Tony she introduced herself “Hi I’m nurse Gwyn”

Tony nodded towards her and introduced himself. The nurse of course had a look of shock considering who he was but she was also shocked because nobody had ever came in with the boy.

“Hi” Peter said as he climbed on the table completely disregarding the step stool.

“Take your shoes and jacket off and hop back down we have to take your height and weight” She told him 

Peter kicked off brown UGGs and threw his jacket on the floor before following the woman out. Peter was used to this routine considering how many times he’s come here growing up. 

Tony rolled his eyes as he picked the jacket up and sit it in the chair before following the boy out as well.

The trio went to where the weighing scale and the wall meter to check his height. Gwyn had Peter step on the scale before writing down his weight. “47 pounds” Gwyn said, as a nurse she knew how to hide her concern about peoples numbers but inside she was concerned about it. 

Tony couldn’t stop the look of shock that crossed his face as he looked at the numbers on the scale he knew Peter was underweight and malnourished he could count the boys ribs but to actually hear how small Peter was sounded crazy to him. 

Gwyn went on to measure Peters height “48 inches” she said aloud as she wrote it on her file. 

“What happened to the other nurse” Peter asked as he hadn’t noticed her among the nurses who had passes by or were coming in out of different rooms. 

“Uh she got fired” Gwyn told Peter being honest with the boy remembering his experience with her

“Oh, that’s good” Peter said 

“Well that is all, why don’t you head back into the room and the doctor will be to see you guys soon” Gwyn told them. 

Peter walked back into the room telling Gwyn bye as he continued on. From what the boy remembered, the doctors office kept crayons and paper for kids to draw on so they didn’t get bored and it looked like they didn’t stop doing that so Peter started coloring. 

While Peter quietly colored, Tony tried to wrap his head around how small the boy was. It was one thing to see the child everyday and know that they were definitely malnourished it was another to hear how underweight they actually were I mean 47 pounds sounded way too small for a child Peters age, on top of that he was barely 4 feet tall. 

It was about 15 minutes later when the doctor came in, he knocked on the door before coming in the room. The doctor was a taller older white man with grey hair on his lab coat read the name “Dr. Green” 

Peter looked up at the door once the doctor came in, once he saw who it was he greeted “Hi Dr. Green” 

“Hello, Peter long time no see” Dr Green said, it had been a couple of years since the man saw Peter but he immediately noticed that Peter looked exactly the same since the last time he saw him. That was slightly worrying in itself because within two years children tend to grow a lot during that time and it looked like Peter hadn’t grown at all.  
The man was shocked to see someone with the boy since it was rare anyone ever came in with him abd he had never see the man before. 

Tony got up out of the chair greeting the doctor. “Hey, I’m Tony” 

“Hi, nice to meet you and you’re Peters?” Dr. Green cut himself off because he didn’t know who Tony was to Peter 

“He’s my dad” Peter finished while he continued coloring.

“Uh, yeah” Tony said awkwardly he didn’t think he’d ever get used to being someone’s dad. 

Changing the subject the doctor told Peter to get up on the table so he could check his blood pressure and all that. He went through the whole check up and checked Peters heart rate and breath sounds. 

“I notice you still have a slight murmur” The doctor said as he had Peter give deep breaths. 

“Is that bad?” Tony asked concerned

“Its not bad but its not great, Peters always had a slight murmur especially with his asthma but it seems it hasn’t gotten better over the years so definitely something to watch out for” the doctor told Tony as Peter wasn’t really paying attention 

Tony nodded as he let the doctor continue the check up.

“ Peter how has you asthma gotten over the years” Doctor Green asked Peter 

Peter was in Lala land so he didn’t hear the doctor talking to him 

“Peter?” Doctor Green asked again. Huh so it wasn’t just him Peter ignored Tony thought to himself 

The doctor repeated his question and this time Peter heard and replied back. “Um I don’t know” he shrugged “About the same I guess” 

“do you notice yourself wheezing or losing breath a lot?” The doctor asked

“Um yeah, especially since I don’t have my inhaler anymore” Peter said now that he thought about it 

“Well we will definitely make sure to refill that for you” The doctor said before sitting down in the rolling chair. “So what brings you in today” He asked looking more so towards Tony since Peter had hopped off the table and went back to coloring in the small area. 

“Honestly, I’ve had the kid for about a month now and I notice he doesn’t eat” Tony said as he moved to where Peter was previously sitting so that he was in front of the doctor. “I mean that cant be good right? Especially with how small he is” Tony continued 

The doctor nodded his head in agreement “I definitely see where you are coming from looking at my files, the last time I saw Peter he was 8 years old and weighted 44 pounds and was about the same height.” The doctor paused as he looked through the file “Today when we took his measurements he’s only weighs 3 pounds more, that shows us that he has a failure to thrive for some reason and not eating can definitely play a big part” 

A failure to thrive Tony thought to himself, he nodded his head agreeing with the doctor about the not eating part. 

“Now Peter has always been small especially with being born premature and throwing all the allergies in on top of that, he’s always had a hard time keeping up with the percentile for his age” The doctor told Tony he had been Peters doctor for a few years since the boy was probably around six years old and although he wasn’t a pediatrician he was sure he was the only doctor Peter had ever been to except for hospitals. 

“Do you have anything to help that?” Tony asked the doctor

“Well normally I’d recommend pediasure which is a high protein drink for children but the problem is its milk based which I’m sure you know Peter is severely allergic to so that would cause more harm than good. What I can say might help is maybe try making him smoothies and getting him to eat snacks throughout the day. The snacks should be healthy of course but he’s a child so make it fun as well, just snacks that are high in nutrients. 

Tony nodded his head at that and kept the ideas in mind. 

“If I nothings changed then Peter is also vegan which makes it hard for children or even people in general to find protein and calcium rich foods so try to make sure he’s getting his calcium as well because that helps control children’s growth as well” The doctor continued “That’s all that I can think of right now so I would recommend trying those out and of course finding Peter a pediatrician who can also help him”

Tony agreed with the doctor and told him that he was definitely looking into that. 

Peter had finished drawing his picture and came to bug Tony “Can we go now?” He asked as he tugged on Tony’s arm 

“Yeah buddy we can go” Tony told Peter. He had gotten all the information he needed at the appointment and gotten tips on how to help Peter. 

Doctor Green was writing prescriptions for Peters asthma inhalers and epipens then they could go. Walking out of the doctors office, Peter told the nurse from earlier goodbye.

“Goodbye Gwyn” He told as Tony grabbed the boys hand. Tony gave a wave to the nurse and told her “thank you”

“Alright now what will it be kid?” Tony asked Peter remembering his promise of something sweet after

“Hmmm” Peter thought for a second looking up at the blue sky “I want donuts”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. Please leave comments and kudos although I don't always have time to respond know that I do read love you guys comments. Im still trying to decide how I want Tonys house to look on one hand I want it to look like his cabin but I also want it to look a little different if that makes sense lol. 
> 
> The kitchen looks kind of like this: 
> 
> https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/59fa0e8cfe8a2878760b5767/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/1217-AD-RDJR03-03_sq.jpg
> 
> Here is Peters hoodie:  
> https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1149/5724/products/KHDRS5-VCARIBRBW-1_2000x.jpg?v=1612505662
> 
> Here are Peters sweatpants:  
> https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1149/5724/products/KSPRS5-RYL_SD_2000x.jpg?v=1612468357
> 
> Here are Peters uggs:  
> https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81JbdWaXJcL._AC_SR1400,1050_.jpg
> 
> Here is Peters jacket:  
> https://image.s5a.com/is/image/saks/0400013160552_BLACK?wid=984&hei=1312&qlt=90&resMode=sharp2&op_usm=0.9,1.0,8,0


End file.
